Monton

The church bell strikes noon and nobody stirs. Not because Montón's residents are ignoring the hour, but because at midday in mid-May there are more tractors than people in the wheat fields surrounding this one-street settlement. With 86 permanent inhabitants and 633 metres of altitude, the village accounts for roughly one person per seven vertical metres—an equation that makes perfect sense once you've walked its length in under four minutes.

Stone, adobe and the sound of wind

Houses here weren't built for photographs. They're practical stacks of ochre stone, adobe and sun-baked brick that shoulder against each other for warmth in winter and shade in summer. Timber doors, thick enough to withstand northerly Levante winds, still hang on hand-forged iron hinges; many have been patched rather than replaced, giving alleyways a lopsided, well-used appearance. Above the roofline the parish tower keeps watch, its weather vane shaped like a cockerel whose tail has lost three feathers to lightning sometime in the last century. No plaque records the date—memory does that job.

Because the council has never invested in heritage signage, visitors need their own curiosity. Peer over a low wall and you'll spot an old winepress cut into rock, its basin stained purple although grapes haven't been trodden here since the 1970s. Round the next corner a former grain store, its wooden slots now empty, smells faintly of straw after rain. These fragments aren't curated; they're simply still standing, which in a village this size counts as conservation policy.

A circular walk that begins and ends with bread

There is no tourist office, so the best map is the one the baker draws on the back of a lottery ticket if you catch him before he closes at 11 a.m. His recommended circuit is 6 km: leave by the eastern track, follow the irrigation ditch, cross the dry stone wall, then drift back along the cereal ridge. The entire loop gains only 90 metres of elevation—enough to raise you above the rooftops but not so high that you lose phone reception. From the crest the view is arithmetic: one village, three farmsteads, two wind turbines, thousands upon thousands of wheat stalks. In April the crop is ankle-high and emerald; by late June it turns the colour of digestive biscuits and whispers like a theatre audience waiting for the curtain.

Carry water. There are no fountains outside the settlement and summer temperatures sit in the low thirties from July to mid-September. Spring and autumn behave more politely—mornings around 14 °C, afternoons nudging 22 °C—but the wind can knife through a fleece once the sun drops behind the Sierra de Vicort.

When the village doubles in size

Montón's annual fiestas honour Santa Ana, whose feast falls on 26 July. For three days the population swells to perhaps 250 as former residents return with folding chairs, guitar cases and opinions about how the plaza used to be smoother. Brass bands practise at dawn, competing with caged canaries that villagers hang outside windows for air. Evenings revolve around a paella the size of a satellite dish and a bar that runs out of lager by ten o'clock because whoever was meant to fetch the second crate is already dancing. Outsiders are welcome, though the programme (photocopied, bilingual, handed out sparingly) assumes you know that processions start fifteen minutes late and that the best spot to watch fireworks is from the disused railway embankment.

Outside fiesta week, nightlife is a dog barking at a hedgehog. Plan accordingly.

Eating (or not) in a village without menus

There is no restaurant, café or shop. The bakery opens three days a week; the mobile fish van calls on Thursdays if the road from Calatayud isn't flooded; everything else happens in kitchens. Visitors staying in one of the two rental houses receive, by Aragonese law of hospitality, a plate of migas—fried breadcrumbs with garlic, grapes and scraps of chorizo—whether they ask for it or not. Serious meals require forward planning. Calatayud, 18 minutes' drive west, has supermarkets and a Friday market where you can buy teruel ham, stone-fruit and wine from the DO Calatayud co-operative for €4.50 a bottle. Bring cash: the village ATM ran out of money during the 2021 olive harvest and nobody has bothered to refill it.

Getting there, staying there, leaving

Montón sits 85 km south-west of Zaragoza. Take the A-2 towards Madrid, exit at km 252, then follow the C-322 through sedate plantations of almond. The final 7 km narrow to single-track tarmac; wheat brushes both wing mirrors in a normal-sized car. Public transport is theoretical: a school bus passes on weekdays at 7 a.m. and returns at 2 p.m.; anyone else needs wheels or a willingness to hitchhike among farmers who recognise footwear before faces.

Accommodation is limited to two self-catering houses, both converted from 19th-century labourers' cottages. Each sleeps four, costs around €70 a night and includes Wi-Fi that drops every time the microwave fires up. Owners leave a key under a flowerpot; invoices arrive by WhatsApp. Book early if your dates coincide with fiestas, Easter, or the September grape harvest, when itinerant pickers snap up beds.

The honest verdict

Montón will never appear on a regional poster campaign. It has no souvenir shop, no viewpoints with railings, no Michelin-listed anything. What it offers instead is scale: a place still small enough that you can learn every face in an afternoon and quiet enough to hear your own blood after dark. Come for that, or for the wheat-light at sunset, or for a single perfect morning when the baker still has croissants and the only decision is whether to walk clockwise or anticlockwise round the fields. Then drive away before lunch, because the village has already given you what it can—and honesty, like stone and silence, is part of the deal.