Herrera de los Navarros

The church bell strikes two. Within minutes, the single grocery shop pulls down its metal shutter and the village bars empty as if someone’s rung a fire alarm. Herrera de los Navarros has gone to sleep. Mid-afternoon inertia is nothing unusual in rural Spain, yet here it feels absolute: no traffic, no pavements warm with chat, only a tractor humming somewhere beyond the sandstone houses and the scent of dry straw drifting in from the surrounding cereal plains.

At 809 m above sea level on a wind-brushed plateau between Zaragoza and Teruel, the place is neither dramatic nor obviously photogenic. British visitors who arrive expecting a tumble of flower-decked balconies will leave disappointed. What Herrera offers instead is a functioning, slightly frayed agricultural settlement where the 21st century has been bolted on with visible screws: rooftop solar panels glint above stone corrals, and 4G flickers in and out on Vodafone handsets beside 14th-century doorways. It is Aragón without the packaging, useful as a low-key base for walking, bird-watching or simply resetting your body clock to a slower timezone.

A town that keeps its own timetable

The rhythm is set by farming and by temperature. Dawn starts cool even in July; by 11 a.m. the sun ricochets off the limestone and the air begins to shimmer. Locals finish fieldwork early and retreat indoors until after five. Visitors who haven’t planned around the closure window find themselves staring at metal grilles, hungry and cashless—there is no ATM, and many houses still trade in notes rather than contactless. Stock up before you leave Calamocha, 25 minutes down the A-23, or you’ll be knocking on neighbours’ doors hoping they’ll swap euros for a bag of crisps.

Bar Herrera, on the main street, will serve a toasted sandwich and caña beer until the bread runs out; Bar La Plaza opposite keeps longer hours and will grill a plain chicken breast if you ask. Vegetarians survive on ensalada mixta and chips. Both bars shut by midnight, so self-catering is the sensible route. The only accommodation inside the village limits is El Tío Carrascón, a stone farmhouse turned holiday rental with beamed ceilings, thick walls and a small pool. Reviews on TripAdvisor UK praise the “total silence at night”; it books quickly for spring and early autumn, periods when the surrounding steppe glows green after rain and temperatures sit comfortably in the low twenties.

Stone, grain and sky

Herrera’s small size—just under 500 souls—makes orientation simple. Stand in the irregular plaza and you can see almost everything: the brick tower of the Asunción church rising like a factory chimney above Arab-tiled roofs, a cluster of stately but unshowy houses bearing the coats of arms of 19th-century cattle merchants, and endless fields stretching north toward the Sierra de Santa Cruz. The architecture is pragmatic rather than pretty: sandstone blocks mortared with local earth, wooden balconies painted the colour of ox blood, heavy gates that once admitted mules now giving onto tiled patios scented by laundry detergent and rosemary.

Inside the church you’ll find a sequence of retablos whose paint is flaking but whose gold still catches the candlelight. Nothing is labelled in English; interpretation is left to the curious. Walk a hundred metres east and houses give way to threshing circles pressed into the earth like giant fingerprints. From here a lattice of farm tracks strikes out across the plateau, way-marked as the Ruta del Jiloca. The gradients are gentle, but shade is non-existent; carry more water than you think necessary and start early. In May you might see great bustards performing their ungainly mating dance, or a lesser kestrel hovering above the cereal heads. Autumn brings mushroom hunters to the pine plantations south-west of the village; permits are required and the town hall keeps a list of authorised zones.

When the wind blows

The same exposed position that gifts big skies also means weather can turn brisk. Winter nights drop below freezing and snow is common enough for the council to store grit in yellow boxes at each street corner. Summer afternoons hit 38 °C, and the breeze feels like someone aiming a hair-dryer at your face. May and late September are the sweet spots, warm enough for shirtsleeves yet cool enough to make walking pleasant. Whatever the season, wind turbines on the surrounding ridges spin relentlessly, their whoosh audible on otherwise silent nights. Some visitors find the silhouette comforting—clean energy in action—others complain it ruins the “untouched” feel. Decide for yourself.

Access is straightforward only if you drive. Ryanair flies direct from London Stansted to Zaragoza twice weekly; from the airport it’s 75 minutes south on the A-23 to junction 257, then a quarter-hour on a single-lane road that snakes between wheat and almond orchards. No bus company serves Herrera; the nearest stop is Calamocha, where a pre-booked taxi will meet you for €35—provided you phone the day before. Without wheels you are effectively stranded during siesta, so a hire car is less luxury than necessity.

Fiestas and other punctuations

The calendar offers two chances to see the village at full volume. Semana Santa is a low-key affair: on Good Friday a dozen hooded penitents march behind a single drum, the only sound apart from boots on asphalt. Larger crowds arrive for the fiestas patronales around 15 August, when the population triples as former residents return. There are sack races in the square, a marquee that pumps out 1980s Spanish pop until 3 a.m., and a communal paella cooked over vine prunings so large it requires a wooden paddle like a boat oar. Rooms are non-existent; day-trippers book months ahead at El Tío Carrascón and fan out from there.

Even at fiesta time Herrera remains manageable. Queues for beer are short, children still play unsupervised in the street, and strangers are greeted with the cautious curiosity reserved for anyone mad enough to holiday in a grain village. You will not find craft stalls, bilingual menus or guided tours. What you get is an invitation to stand at the bar while the owner draws a sketch map to the nearest bustard field, and the realisation that Spain, for all its high-speed trains and city break buzz, still contains places that clock off at two.