Pozuel de Ariza

The village phone box still works. So does the stone trough where women once scrubbed clothes with river water. In Pozuel de Ariza, both sit in active service—though now the calls are mobile-top-up emergencies and the laundry is mostly hiking boots rinsed after a dusty circuit through the cereal fields. Twenty-four residents keep these relics company, plus whoever’s rented the old schoolmaster’s house for the weekend. That’s the entire census. The silence between them has weight.

A Plateau That Breathes

At 770 metres above sea level, the village rides the southern lip of the Calatayud basin. The land rolls away in blond waves of wheat and barley, broken only by almond groves that flash white for ten days each March then retreat to grey sticks. There is no dramatic gorge, no cathedral town on the horizon—just sky and the faint outline of the Iberian System forty kilometres east. The plateau breathes: hot dry air rising in summer, cold continental pools settling in winter. Frost can bite as late as April; August afternoons touch 36 °C and send lizards scampering into wall crevices.

The built fabric matches the climate—thick stone walls, doors small enough to duck through, roofs of Arab tile weighted against the cierzo wind that barrels up from the Ebro valley. Houses cluster round a church whose bell tower doubles as the village time-piece; it strikes the quarters even when nobody’s listening. Adobe patches show where owners mixed local clay with straw and sheep wool, a recipe the Romans found already in place. You can circle the historic core in twenty minutes, but the texture deserves slower inspection: iron grills forged in a Zaragoza workshop 150 years ago, a datestone reading 1617 set sideways into a later wall, a bricked-up arch that once led to the communal oven.

Walking Without Waymarks

Official hiking routes stop at the county boundary, yet the web of farm tracks is public and perfectly legal to use. A three-kilometre loop south-east drops to the dry ravine of the Barranco de Valdeolivas, where rockrose and thyme scent the air each time a boot brushes them. Add another hour by continuing to the abandoned hamlet of Las Tiendas—roofless houses slowly being peeled by sun and frost, a stone cross still upright in the square. Spring brings red poppies threading the wheat; October turns the stubble to bronze. Navigation is simple: keep the village water tank on your right shoulder to return, or download the free IGN 1:25 000 sheet before leaving Calatayud—signposts don’t exist and phone signal flickers.

Early starters share the paths with tractors heading to feed stations; drivers raise a hand without slowing, acknowledging the foreign ritual of walking for pleasure. By ten o’clock the sun flattens colour and most sensible folk retreat to the single bar for a cortado. Sensible folk, here, means you.

What Passes for Gastronomy

There is no restaurant. The bar—open weekends only, hours posted on a scrap of cardboard—serves coffee, ice-cream and cans of beer kept in a chest freezer. For food you need either a lunch booking at Casa Ramón in Villarroya de la Sierra (18 km, ring before 10 a.m.) or a shopping bag packed in Calatayud. That said, if your visit coincides with the summer fiestas, the village society lays on a paella the size of a cartwheel in the street. Outsiders are welcome, but tickets are sold at face value: €8, cash only, no chip-and-pin. The rice arrives in sacks from Valencia, rabbit from a farm in Daroca, saffron from a tin kept in the organiser’s airing cupboard since last harvest. Eat, wash your plate in the trough, hand it back.

The local pantry revolves around cordero (milk-fed lamb), long-life chorizo and migas—fried breadcrumbs meant to use up yesterday’s loaf. In winter shepherds still make curd from ewes’ milk; if you spot a white cloth hanging on a door handle it signals cheese for sale, usually €6 a round. Olive oil comes from cooperatives near Belchite; the village itself lost its last press in 1973.

Getting Here, Getting Out

Zaragoza–Delicias station, two hours by train from Madrid Puerta de Atocha, is the practical gateway. Pick up a hire car there; the A-2 westbound is dual carriageway all the way to Calatayud. Exit at kilometre 238, follow the N-234 south for ten minutes, then swing left onto the ZA-315—a single-lane strip that narrows further after Santa Cruz de Moncayo. The final 12 km twist through wheat oceans; meet a combine and someone must reverse. Petrol stations close early: fill in Calatayud or risk the village’s one vending pump that swallows notes only, no cards.

Public transport exists on Tuesdays. A school minibus leaves Calatayud market at 13:30, returns at 17:00. Non-residents can ride if there’s space; fare €2.40 exact change. Any other day you’re driving, cycling or thumbing—average wait for a lift is long enough to finish a chapter.

Accommodation is private. The ayuntamiento keeps a list of three houses restored with EU grants: thick walls, wood-burning stoves, Wi-Fi that copes with email but chokes on Netflix. Expect €70 a night for two, minimum stay two nights in low season. Bring slippers—stone floors are cold even in May—and remember the village observes the old siesta hush from 14:00 until the church bell rings four.

The Calendar That Still Matters

15 August is the big date. Locals who left for Zaragoza, Barcelona or Wolverhampton return with folding chairs and babies named after grandparents. A brass band from La Almunia processes through streets draped in paper bunting; at night a disco rig plays 90s Spanish pop until the generator cuts out. Visitors are tolerated provided they don’t park in the single shaded spot reserved for the mayor’s Seat Ibiza.

Outside fiesta week the rhythm is set by agriculture: sowing in November, spraying in March, harvest in late June. The church door opens only for Sunday mass at 11:00; if you want to see the 16th-century fresco fragments, ask at house number 14—Doña Pilar keeps the key and appreciates a donation for roof repairs.

Winter sharpens the experience. Daytime highs hover at 6 °C, nights drop to –5 °C and the wind scours. Roads can glaze; carry snow chains if travelling between December and February. But the compensation is crystalline air that lets you count the distant wind turbines on the Moncayo ridge, and a quiet so complete you’ll hear your own pulse.

Pozuel de Ariza offers no souvenir stalls, no guided tastings, no ticketed viewpoints. It gives instead the rare sensation of ratio: more landscape than humans, more sky than roofline, more time than tasks. Arrive with a full tank, a sense of courtesy and realistic expectations; leave before the plateau’s silence becomes addictive.