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about Villanueva del Rebollar de la Sierra
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The thermometer read –8 °C when the bread van rolled into Villanueva del Rebollar at dawn. A woman in a quilted housecoat stepped out, exchanged a few syllables of Aragonese with the driver, and hurried back inside clutching two barra loaves still too hot to hold. By the time the engine noise faded up the slate-coloured road, the only sound left was the click of her door latch. Forty-four residents, one baker, zero tourists: a normal Wednesday in January.
Most maps give up before they reach the village. From Teruel you follow the A-23 towards Zaragoza, peel off at Cella, then spend 45 minutes climbing the CV-130. The tarmac narrows to a single track just after the abandoned railway siding at El Vallecillo; stone drops on one side, pine tops on the other, and every hairpin is signed “12 %”. Snow poles begin at 900 m; by 1,085 m the verges are granite walls capped with orange lichen. The road ends in a triangular patch of gravel beside the church – there is no car park, merely space for four cars if everyone breathes in.
What you notice first is the cold clarity. At this altitude the Sierra de Gúdar sucks moisture from the air, so sky and stone look freshly rinsed. The houses, built from the same grey-brown schist they stand on, seem to grow out of the ridge rather than sit on it. Roofs are tiled in dark Arabic comma-shapes that funnel melt-water into stone cisterns; balconies are just deep enough for a geranium pot and a haunch of air-cured lamb. Nothing is picturesque in the postcard sense – paint peels, satellite dishes tilt at hung-over angles – but the place has the honesty of a working yard.
Walk the length of the village in five minutes and you will have passed the only public services that exist: a vending machine selling tractor diesel, a fountain dated 1897, and a bar whose door bears the hand-written warning “If we’re closed, we’re closed”. The church of San Pedro keeps its own hours; the key hangs on a nail inside the bakery, but you must ask for it in Spanish – no-one switches to English here, partly because no-one can, partly because it would feel like bad manners.
Outside the summer fiestas the social calendar is governed by weather and livestock. When the first thrush sings, villagers prune the 200-year-old cherry terraces below the cemetery. In late October they beat the oaks with long canes so the rebollo acorns fall for the free-range pigs; the same animals reappear in January as blood sausages hanging in stairwells, each link labelled in eyebrow pencil with the owner’s initials. If you are invited to taste, refusal is taken personally.
Walking options begin directly from the fountain. A farm track drops north-east through abandoned almond groves to the abandoned hamlet of Los Hoyos, 2 km away. Stone walls still stand, but the roofs collapsed under snow in 1953 and no-one bothered to rebuild. Continue another hour and you reach the head of the Pitarque gorge, where griffon vultures ride thermals that smell of pine resin and wet iron. The path is marked by occasional cairns rather than paint flashes; in April you share it only with caterpillar tractors heading uphill to fertilise the pine plantations. Stout footwear is non-negotiable – after rain the clay sticks to soles like cold treacle, then sets solid.
Winter walking is possible but demands respect. The CV-130 is salted twice a day when ice threatens, yet the Guardia Civil still close it without warning if the wind drifts snow across the pass. Locals keep tyre chains in the boot from November to May; visitors who arrive in hire cars have been known to spend three nights sleeping in the village school while storms blow through. Mobile reception dies halfway up the climb, so checking the MeteoAragon forecast before leaving Teruel is sensible rather than paranoid.
Food is mountain-plainer than anything you will find on the coast. The daily menu at the bar – served only at 14.00 sharp – might be cardoon stew with morcilla, followed by quince jelly and coffee. A glass of Calatayud garnacha costs €1.80; bread is charged by the hundred grammes. There is no vegetarian option, and asking for gluten-free tapas produces a polite shrug. If you prefer to self-cater, bring supplies with you. The nearest supermarket is 38 km away in Utrillas, and the village shop closed in 2008 when the owner retired to Valencia.
Accommodation is limited to four rooms above the bar and two rural houses rented out by families who moved to Zaragoza in the 1990s. Expect wood-burning stoves, stone floors that suck heat from bare feet, and hot-water timers that click off after five minutes. Prices hover around €55 a night, breakfast of toasted bread and olive oil included. Sheets are line-dried, which means they smell of hawthorn in May and woodsmoke in November. Wi-Fi exists but travels through copper wire laid in the Franco era; streaming a film is possible only if no-one else is online and the wind is not blowing from the north.
Spring arrives late. Snow patches still cling to north-facing slopes in April, yet by mid-May the oak canopy is lime-green and night temperatures rise above freezing. This is the safest season for drivers and the prettiest for photographers: the contrast between fresh leaf and black trunk gives every copse the look of a woodcut. It is also fiesta time. On the third weekend of June the village doubles in population as emigrants return. The Saturday night dance spills out of the cultural centre into the street; someone wheels a barrow of ice-cold beers from the bakery, and at 03.00 the mayor hands out slices of sponge cake soaked in local honey. By Monday morning the exodus is complete – the last car leaves at dawn, taking the baker’s daughter back to her teaching job in Huesca.
Autumn brings colour, but also the first real chill. In October the rebollo oaks turn through copper, rust and chocolate before shedding in a single windy night. The air smells of mushroom and wet slate; wild boar damage appears overnight as torn turf and hoof-drilled mud. Hunters arrive from Teruel city, dressed in orange reflective vests that spoil every photograph. They leave empty cartridge cases in the lay-bys and occasionally a dented Coke can in the fountain – the only litter you will see all year.
Come prepared or do not come at all. That is the unspoken rule. Fill the tank, download offline maps, pack a down jacket even in July. Villanueva del Rebollar will not flatter you with souvenir shops or smooth asphalt, but it will hand over its silence without asking questions. Stand on the ridge at dusk when the only light is a single bulb over the bar door and the plateau below has vanished into violet dark; you will understand why some of the 44 stay put, and why the rest keep returning every Christmas to check that the stone houses, and the silence, are still there.
