History

This place was the most important Spa and Healing Center of the Purépecha Empire. The main spring of these hot springs was attributed the power to prolong youth indefinitely.

Several centuries later, given the undoubted action of its waters, the missionaries who settled in the region became interested in the waters of Agua Blanca and Fray Juan de San Miguel in his memoirs narrates its surprising action: “That it cured all diseases and “It prolonged life.”

In 1938, the date on which the Mexico-Guadalajara highway was completed, Don Roberto Medellín, Rector of the UNAM, became interested in investigating the properties of water.

After the cure obtained by Engineer Francisco Vázquez del Mercado, a member of President Lázaro Cárdenas' cabinet, he acquired what was established as the Agua Blanca Spa.

This effort was soon followed by the Henríquez Guzmán brothers who built the famous Hotel San José Purúa, which at the time was the largest hotel in Mexico and which today functions only as a spa while the hotel facilities are in ruins.

In 2001 the property was acquired by the current owners and changed its focus to being a SPA and ecological hotel. These, for many years, had dreamed of once being the guardians of some place in the middle of nature, which could be shared with guests from all over the world.