Argente

The cereal fields around Argente start to glow at about six-thirty on a June morning. From the village’s modest bell-tower you can watch the light roll eastwards across the plain until it hits the stone houses, the tractor shed and the single bar that is already serving coffee at 80 cents a cup. At 1,250 m above sea level, the air is thin enough to make the coffee taste stronger; it is also the reason the night sky stays velvet-black long after London’s dawn commuter trains have left Paddington.

High-plateau life

Argente sits on the southern rim of the Teruel uplands, a region Spaniards call la España vaciada – the emptied Spain. Only 193 residents remain, yet the place functions. The baker from neighbouring Monreal del Campo calls three times a week, the council fills the water trough for sheep on the hour, and the church door is left unlocked in case anyone fancies quiet contemplation between cereal harvests. British visitors tend to arrive expecting a museum village and leave realising they have spent the day inside someone else’s ordinary Tuesday.

Stone and adobe houses line two short streets that meet at a small square. Oak doors hang on medieval iron hinges, but the cars outside are modern and the Wi-Fi inside La Carretería guesthouse is faster than most rural UK connections. Booking is essential: the village offers exactly eight rooms to outsiders. Sara, the English-speaking manager, texts detailed driving directions because Google still thinks the High Street is a farm track.

Walking without way-markers

There are no ticket booths, audio guides or postcard racks. Instead, farm tracks head north towards the Sierra de Cucalón, south towards the ruins of a Roman watch-tower locals call * el Castillejo *. Distances are deceptive: the horizon looks a fifteen-minute stroll away; forty minutes later you are still walking between wheat rows, boots powdered with red dust. Take water. Shade is provided only by the occasional holm-oak or an abandoned threshing circle whose stone walls cast a shadow just wide enough for one person and a sandwich.

Spring brings colour—crimson poppies, mauve flax, the acid yellow of Alyssum—but by mid-July the palette narrows to gold and bronze. Photographers fare best at either end of the day when the low sun lengthens the stubble and the sky turns the same intense blue found on 17th-century Talavera tiles. Tripods are unnecessary: the plateau is wind-flat and stone walls offer ready-made support.

What you’ll eat (and when you’ll eat it)

The village bar opens for breakfast at seven, closes at noon, reopens at eight for beer and tapas, shuts when the last customer leaves. There is no printed menu; ask what exists. Usually: migas—fried breadcrumbs laced with garlic and grapes; torreznos—air-cured pork belly flash-fried until it shatters; local lamb chops the size of a child’s hand, grilled over vine cuttings and served with a plate of roast peppers. Vegetarians get eggs, cheese and superb tinned white asparagus. Pudding is watermelon chilled in the mountain spring that doubles as the public wash-house. A three-course lunch with wine costs about €12; payment is cash only and the nearest ATM is 18 km away in Monreal del Campo.

Night skies and winter silence

Light pollution maps show Argente under a near-black dome. Step outside on a clear moonless night and the Milky Way feels close enough to snag on the church roof. Bring binoculars rather than a telescope: the dry air and 360° horizon make meteor-watching easy. August Perseids can reach one a minute; in December the Geminids streak across snow-crisp skies.

Winter arrives suddenly. The first southerly cierzo wind can drop the temperature from 12 °C to –4 °C in two hours. Snow is sporadic but when it lands the approach road from the A-23 is closed until the plough reaches Teruel province’s southern outpost. Chains or winter tyres are compulsory between November and April; car-hire desks at Zaragoza airport will fit them if you ask when collecting, not the night before a blizzard.

Making it work as a base

Argente suits drivers. Ryanair’s morning Stansted–Zaragoza flight lands at 11:40 local time; by 13:30 you can be eating migas on the terrace of La Carretería. A car also lets you string together a two-centre break: the coast at Valencia is 160 km, less than two hours down the A-23. Spend three nights on the plain for silence and stars, then head east for paella and sea breezes.

Non-drivers can, in theory, take the high-speed train to Zaragoza-Delicias, a regional coach to Calamocha, and a taxi for the final 25 minutes. In practice there are only two taxis and neither works Sundays. The British review that begins “Quirky, yes—if you enjoy hitch-hiking with sheep” refers to this logistical gap.

The things that go wrong

Mobile signal wobbles between Vodafone and Orange depending on which way the wind blows. The village pump failed for two days last August; guests at the hotel had to shower with bottles bought from the agricultural co-op. Fiesta weekend in mid-September triples the population but also fills the single street with boom-boxes until four a.m.; light sleepers should book elsewhere or join in.

And the landscape is not dramatic. Those expecting cliff-edge villages or cedar-clad sierras will find the plateau almost monotonously open. The charm—if it works for you—is scale rather than height: larks instead of lammergeiers, the curve of the earth instead of craggy summits.

Heading home

Leave early and you’ll meet the baker’s van departing, headlights fingering the mist that pools in every roadside dip. The cereal stubble steams, the church bell strikes seven, and for a moment Argente feels busy. By nine the sun is high, the streets empty again, and the only sound is the soft clank of a farmer fitting a new gate. Drive south towards Valencia and the plain drops away; within an hour you’re amid orange groves and motorway tolls, the city’s heat rising to meet you. The plateau, already behind, shrinks in the rear-view mirror until it is nothing more than a line of gold beneath Spain’s enormous sky.