Luna

A village that once elected its own Pope

The road from Zaragoza turns off the autopista at Ejea de los Caballeros and dives into a checkerboard of wheat, barley and sunflowers. After twenty minutes the fields tilt upwards and a honey-coloured ridge appears. On top sits Luna, population 694, elevation 477 m, birthplace of the man who would call himself Pope Benedict XIII and split the Catholic Church in two. The skyline still belongs to the fourteenth-century castle-palace the Luna family built with stone so soft you can scrape it with a fingernail. It is roofless, floorless and thoroughly dangerous in places, yet the keep and a chunk of curtain wall survive, giving clear line-of-sight over territory the family once taxed.

Most British travellers pass within ten kilometres on the way to the Pyrenean foothills or the Bardenas Reales desert and never notice the turn-off. That is half the point. Luna has no souvenir tat, no audio guides, no admission charges. You park on the ridge for free, walk under an archway that still bears the Luna coat of arms and find yourself in a grid of narrow lanes where the loudest sound is the wind rattling TV aerials.

Stone, adobe and the smell of bread at dawn

The houses are built tight against each other, party walls shared like gossip. Lower floors are stone, upper ones adobe brick washed the colour of biscuit. Timber balconies are just wide enough for a geranium pot and a pair of drying trousers. At ground level wooden doors are studded with iron nails the size of 50-p pieces; many still close with a beam rather than a Yale. By 07:30 the first bread van does its round, horn beeping, and the smell of crusty pan de pueblo drifts through the streets. There is no bakery inside the village – the van comes from Ejea – so locals queue in slippers and coats, clutching exact change.

Above the lanes the square tower of Santiago church keeps watch. It is Romanesque in bones, remodelled whenever the Moors, the English or the French dropped by. Inside, the nave is cool even at midday and the font is older than the Pope himself. A leaflet in Spanish lists opening hours; if the door is locked, ask at the bar opposite – the key lives in a kitchen drawer.

Walking without a rucksack full of carabiners

Luna sits on a low ridge but the surrounding countryside is table-flat. That makes for gentle walking rather than thigh-burning ascents. A signed 6-km loop, the Camino del Bardají, sets off from the castle gate, crosses a wheat field, dips into a pine strip planted to stop the wind stealing topsoil, then returns along a farm track where larks rise in vertical spurts. Spring brings green so bright it looks artificial; by July the palette has shifted to gold and sepia, the horizon wobbling with heat haze. Take water – there is no café en route – and expect to meet more tractors than people.

If you hanker for hills, the five-hundred-metre climb to neighbouring Biota starts 3 km down the road. The reward is a sandstone ridge and views back towards Luna that make the village look like a ship adrift in an ocean of straw.

Food that arrives on a metal plate hotter than the sun

Mealtimes are dictated by the fields. Workers start at dawn, break at 10:00 for coffee and a brandy, then eat their main meal at 14:00. Visitors fall into the same rhythm because nothing else is open. Bar La Plaza, on the tiny main square, serves a menú del día for €12 that begins with lentil stew thick enough to stand a spoon in and ends with arroz con leche dusted with cinnamon. Lamb chops – chuletón – arrive sizzling on a cast-iron platter; request sin sal extra if your blood pressure objects. Vegetarians get eggs and chips, or a tomato salad that tastes of sun rather of the fridge. House red from the Cariñena co-operative costs €2.20 a glass and is perfectly drinkable; ask for una carafe if you want the local version of a half-bottle.

Supper is trickier. Both bar-restaurants close on random Mondays and neither answers the phone. Stock up in Ejea before you arrive: the village mini-mart shuts at 20:00 and there is no cash machine. Friday brings a produce market that occupies the square until 13:00; peaches cost €1.50 a kilo and the cheese man will let you taste before you commit.

When to come, and when to stay away

April to mid-June is ideal: daytime temperatures sit in the low twenties, nights are cool enough for a jacket and the wheat is green enough to photograph. September repeats the trick with added grape harvest. July and August are fierce – 35 °C is normal – but the village fills with returning families, so you will find music in the square and cold beer at midnight. August 15 brings bull-running through the streets; if that appals, book elsewhere. Winter is quiet, occasionally snowy, and the castle becomes a wind tunnel. Bars still open but heating is patchy: bring a jumper and expect to pay cash.

Getting there without the wrong kind of adventure

Fly Ryanair or easyJet to Zaragoza (direct from Stansted and Manchester March-October). Hire cars live in a cabin opposite arrivals; the drive to Luna is 75 minutes on the A-68, toll-free and well-signed. Petrol is cheaper at the supermarket pumps on the outskirts of Zaragoza than on the motorway. If you insist on public transport, a twice-daily bus links Zaragoza Delicias station with Ejea; from there a local service reaches Luna at 14:10 and 19:00, except Sundays when nothing moves. A taxi from Ejea costs €25 – reserve the day before because there are only two cabs.

The honest verdict

Luna will not change your life. It offers half a day of slow wandering, a decent lunch and the small thrill of standing where a pope once played as a boy. Nightlife is a choice between the bar terrace and the bench outside the church. Yet that scarcity is the appeal. You come for silence, for stone that has not been repointed for Instagram, and for the realisation that Spanish villages carry on being villages long after the guidebooks have moved on. Arrive with a full tank, a phrase-book and modest expectations, and Luna repays with wheat-scented air, starlight you rarely see at home and the smug knowledge that you are probably the only British car in town.