Just back home after two weeks in Arillas. What you wrote near the start of this thread Dimitri has put much of the experience into context. I'm always intrigued by the history of the places we stay. I've found out that some "authentic" villages with a long history can become so given over to tourism that local industries (e.g. farming) are abandoned, as they become less profitable and harder work than attending to tourist demands, with the end result that the economy ceases to exist once the tourists go home, and the locals cease to live in the village outside the holiday season. There's no produce at such times for sustenance, and folk use their profits to return to the larger towns - or even to families in other countries, to find other, or similar work during the European winter.
For me, one of the charms of much of Greece is that it hasn't yet created a year-round tourism infrastructure, unlike coastal Spain, Cyprus, Malta et al, and thus retains a cultural life that is reinforced by an eight month break from tourism. I like to hear, for example, as I've often heard in places I've visited, some local person playing an instrument, or singing a song to a tune I'd have great difficulty in remembering, because it isn't of the nature that would go down well at a bouzouki night in a tourist resort in July. (Mind you - I like to hear those songs too - especially after a good meal and a glass or three of wine!)
Arillas is a tourist resort, whatever else it is, or has been, and I happily embrace that as well as its history. Doesn't make it any less "authentic."
Thanks for a lovely couple of weeks, Arillas. After a bleak brush with cancer three years ago, I find it difficult to contemplate what I might do in following years, but Hope that I'm given plenty of time to revisit.