Polenino

The church bell tolls twelve, yet only two cars sit in the square. A tractor rumbles past the bar, its driver raising a hand without slowing. This is Polenino at midday in late May—290 metres above sea level, halfway between Zaragoza and Huesca, and still 60 kilometres from the nearest motorway. The map calls it Los Monegros; locals call it simply “el pueblo,” as though nowhere else matters.

At first sight the place looks half-asleep, but the geometry is sharp. Stone houses the colour of wheat form a tight grid, their rooflines interrupted by the squat tower of the parish church. Walls are thick enough to swallow mobile signal; windows are small enough to keep July heat at bay. Walk twenty paces down Calle Mayor and the settlement ends abruptly—no suburbs, no ring road, just cereal fields that run flat to a sky that feels oversized for 197 inhabitants.

The Steppe that Pretends to be a Desert

Los Monegros is routinely labelled “desert” by guidebooks seduced by the annual rainfall figure—barely 350 mm, less than Marrakech. The truth is more subtle. Polenino sits on a raised plateau of loam and limestone; what grows here is wheat and barley, not cacti. When the crop is knee-high the wind turns the whole landscape into a moving yellow sea. Come August the harvesters shave it to stubble, exposing a pale clay that cracks like broken crockery. The illusion of emptiness is complete, yet the soil is worked every day.

That openness delivers unexpected bonuses at dawn. Stand on the earth track that leaves the village north-east and you can watch the sun lift out of the Ebro valley, tinting the Pyrenees rose before the plain has shaken off its chill. Photographers talk about “Monegros light” for good reason: no hills means no shadows until midday, so colours look over-saturated, almost Mediterranean. Bring a polarising filter and water—there is no shade.

What Passes for Sights

Guidebooks that promise “top-ten attractions” will leave you short-changed. Polenino’s church of San Pedro apóstol is plain brick and rubblework, rebuilt piecemeal after a fire in 1840. Inside, the single nave smells of wax and damp stone. A polychrome statue of the Virgin wears a cloak embroidered with the names of every girl baptised here in 1953; the gold thread is now the colour of nicotine, but the list remains legible. Ask the bar owner for the key; he keeps it under the counter next to the coffee grinder.

Behind the altar a painted panel shows Christ wearing local peasant sandals—alpargatas—instead of the regulation Roman straps. That detail alone is worth the detour for art historians tracing regional folk iconography. If locked, try again after 7 p.m. when the sacristan finishes watering his tomatoes.

The rest of the catalogue is domestic: stone granaries balanced on mushroom-shaped feet to keep out mice; an iron drinking trough dated 1897 and still used by the shepherd who brings 200 merino sheep through every October; a row of brick bread ovens converted into garden sheds. Each element is ordinary, yet together they explain how people survived here before electricity and EU subsidies.

Walking Without Waymarks

There are no signed footpaths, which bothers some visitors and liberates others. The GR-90 long-distance route passes 12 km to the south, but Polenino itself is a blank canvas. Farmers’ tracks form a grid as regular as city streets; pick any and walk for an hour—you will meet a junction, not a fence. Distances feel elastic: the grain silo you swear is ten minutes away stays precisely the same size for half a mile, then suddenly looms overhead.

Spring brings colour in the plough lines—poppies, corn-cockle and a blue trumpeting morning glory the locals call “campanitas del diablo.” Birdlife is steppe-specialist: you will hear calandra larks before you see them, a liquid call that seems to pour out of the soil itself. Pack binoculars and a windproof; the same breeze that cools you in May can reach 50 kph when the cierzo descends from the north-west.

Summer hiking is for the hardy. Thermometers touch 40 °C by 11 a.m.; the cereal stubble turns into a million golden needles that work through shoe mesh. Start before sunrise, carry two litres of water per person, and finish in the bar for a doble con leche while the tiles are still cool enough to touch.

Calories and Other Essentials

The only public eating option is Bar Oasis on the square. Opening hours follow an elastic logic: if the owner’s daughter is away at college, lunch finishes when the last regular leaves. Order the menú del día (€12) and you get soup thick enough to stand a spoon in, followed by chuletón al estilo monegrino—a lamb shoulder slow-cooked with garlic and sweet paprika until it surrenders in strings. Pudding is usually natillas, a set custard flecked with lemon zest and the memory of school dinners.

For self-caterers, the weekly fish van arrives Thursday at 10:30; the bread lady in a white Peugeot Partner honks her horn around 9 a.m. daily except Monday. There is no supermarket, no cash machine, and the nearest petrol is 18 km away in Sariñena—plan accordingly.

Accommodation inside the village is limited to one casa rural sleeping six. At €90 per night it is cheaper than comparable cottages in the Pyrenees, but you share the lane with grain lorries that start work at 6 a.m. Quieter options lie 7 km south at the pottery village of Lalueza, where two restored farmhouses offer pools and blackout shutters—essential during July fiestas when Polenino’s solitary disco cart parks opposite the church and plays 1990s Spanish pop until the Guardia Civil turn up.

When the Air Turns Cold

Winter strips the landscape to essentials. Mist pools in the low fields so thickly you can lose sight of your boots; by 3 p.m. the sun already skims the bell tower, throwing a shadow the length of three streets. Night-time temperatures drop to –5 °C, and the old houses, designed for summer heat, can feel cavernous. Most visitors stay away between December and February, which is a pity: steppe winters deliver crystalline skies and the chance to watch great bustards—one of Europe’s heaviest flying birds—descend to feed on spilled grain. Bring a down jacket and request the village’s only pellet stove when you book.

Snow is rare but not impossible; when it arrives the council clears the main road with a single yellow tractor, leaving drifts across side streets that can keep a hire car prisoner for days. Chains are advisable if you plan to drive out early—the same fields that bake hard in summer turn to gumbo after a 20-minute shower.

Leaving Without Hurry

The daily bus to Huesca departs at 6:45 a.m., an hour most travellers meet only if their flight leaves from Zaragoza that afternoon. Miss it and the next is tomorrow. Car hire remains the pragmatic choice: the A-23 motorway is 35 minutes south, but the approach road crosses an aqueduct built for a railway that never came, a reminder that progress has always been negotiable here.

Polenino will not dazzle with spectacle; it offers instead the slower pleasure of watching a place function because people still work the same soil their grandparents did. The reward is not a tick on a bucket list but the gradual realisation that the horizon is not empty—it is simply measured in seasons, not selfies.