Picón

The Village That Time (and Tourists) Forgot

Six hundred and three metres above sea level, Picón sits on a plateau so flat you could play billiards on it. The village's church tower rises like a compass needle from a sea of ochre fields, visible long before you reach the first houses. It's this tower, rather than any grand monument, that marks Picón's place on the map of Castilla-La Mancha—a region better known for Don Quixote's windmills than for the volcanic landscape that cradles this forgotten corner of Spain.

Drive south from Ciudad Real for thirty-five kilometres and the CM-412 highway delivers you to a place where the pace drops to match the languid sweep of the horizon. Picón's 667 inhabitants have perfected the art of living slowly. Morning coffee stretches into lunch. Afternoon siestas bleed into evening strolls. The village clock strikes the hour with all the urgency of a tortoise contemplating a lettuce leaf.

Stone, Sun and Sacred Art

The Church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción dominates Picón's modest skyline for good reason. Built in layers over centuries, its architecture reads like a palimpsest of Spanish religious history—Romanesque foundations supporting Gothic arches beneath a Baroque facade. Inside, the air carries that particular scent of old churches everywhere: beeswax, incense and the faint memory of centuries of candle smoke.

The altar retablo, carved from local pine and gilded in the 17th century, depicts the Assumption in typically theatrical Spanish style. Mary rises heavenward surrounded by cherubs whose chubby cheeks have worn smooth from the touch of devoted fingers. Weekday mornings find elderly women lighting candles here, their murmured prayers mixing with the squeak of the church door as latecomers shuffle in.

Beyond the church, Picón's streets follow the medieval pattern that grew organically from shepherds' paths. White-washed houses shoulder against each other for shade, their wooden doors painted in colours that once announced the owner's trade—blue for farmers, green for merchants, red for the few families wealthy enough to own land beyond the village boundaries.

The Volcanic Heart of Campo de Calatrava

Picón rests on one of Europe's southernmost volcanic fields, though you'd never guess it from the gentle landscape. The last eruption happened 3,000 years ago, leaving behind a geological playground of crater lakes and conical hills that puncture the plateau's flatness. Laguna del Ruido, a twenty-minute drive north, fills an extinct crater where flamingos occasionally stop during migration. The water's high mineral content turns it emerald green in summer, blood red in autumn.

Local farmers have learned to work with the volcanic soil's quirks. The porous rock stores winter rain like a sponge, releasing moisture slowly through the scorching summer months. Olive trees planted by the Romans still produce oil with a mineral tang that chefs in Madrid pay premium prices for. Their twisted trunks, silver-green leaves flickering in the constant breeze, mark out Picón's territory more clearly than any map.

Walking tracks radiate from the village into this peculiar landscape, though calling them 'tracks' flatters what are essentially farm access roads. They serve walkers well enough, threading between cereal fields that shift from green velvet in spring to gold bullion by June. The absence of steep hills makes for easy walking, but the sun deserves respect. Start early or wait for evening—midday heat in July turns pleasant strolls into endurance tests.

Food Without the Fanfare

Picón's approach to food remains stubbornly traditional. The village's two bars serve what locals call 'comida casera'—home cooking without pretension. Migas, a peasant dish of fried breadcrumbs with garlic and chorizo, appears on Thursday lunch menus alongside pisto manchego, the Spanish cousin of ratatouille. Both taste better than they sound, particularly when accompanied by the local Manchego cheese, aged in caves where volcanic rock maintains constant temperature year-round.

The weekly market on Saturday mornings brings farmers from surrounding villages. They set up stalls around Plaza Mayor, selling produce that never sees a supermarket shelf—tomatoes still warm from greenhouse sun, eggs with feathers attached, honey from hives placed among rosemary bushes that grow wild across the plateau. Prices hover at roughly half what you'd pay in Britain, though haggling remains socially unacceptable. The asking price is the price.

Evening meals run late, as everywhere in Spain. Restaurants (and the term applies loosely here) fill after 9 pm with families spanning three generations. Grandparents order for grandchildren while parents discuss the harvest over glasses of La Mancha wine. The local red, made from tempranillo grapes that thrive in the volcanic soil, costs €12 a bottle and punches well above its weight.

When the Village Wakes Up

August transforms Picón. The fiesta patronal honouring Nuestra Señora de la Asunción brings back sons and daughters who've built lives in Madrid, Barcelona, even London. The population swells to perhaps 1,500, though nobody's counting. Processions wind through streets decorated with paper flowers. Brass bands play until dawn. The village's single petrol station runs dry as visitors arrive in cars they clearly can't afford to run back in the city.

September's romería provides a gentler celebration. Locals pilgrimage three kilometres to a shrine dedicated to the village's patron saint, carrying picnic baskets laden with cold meats, cheese and the first wine of the season. The walk takes place at sunset, timed to arrive as the plateau's vast sky turns from gold to purple to velvet black. Someone always brings a guitar. Someone else always sings off-key.

Practicalities for the Curious

Getting here requires wheels. Madrid-Barajas airport sits two hours north on excellent motorways; Valencia's airport adds another thirty minutes. Car hire isn't optional—public transport barely exists beyond Ciudad Real. The drive itself provides half the pleasure, particularly the final stretch where the road straightens to bisect wheat fields that ripple like water in the wind.

Accommodation options remain limited. Casa Oretani, a converted farmhouse on the village edge, offers six rooms around a courtyard pool. At €80 per night including breakfast, it's hardly budget, but it's the only game in town. The owners speak fluent English and provide maps for walking routes they've personally waymarked through the volcanic landscape.

Visit in April or May when the plateau erupts not with lava but with wildflowers. Temperatures hover around 22°C, perfect for walking. October delivers similar conditions plus the grape harvest, when local cooperatives welcome visitors to stomp grapes in the traditional manner. Summer brings fierce heat—40°C isn't unusual—and winter, though mild, strips the landscape to its bones under grey skies that stretch horizon to horizon.

Picón won't change your life. It offers no Instagram moments, no bucket-list experiences, no stories to bore dinner guests with back home. What it provides instead is something increasingly rare: a glimpse of rural Spain as it actually exists, beyond the reach of tour buses and tapas trails. Come for three days, stay for four, leave before the silence becomes too comfortable. Some visitors find themselves planning return journeys before they've reached the motorway. Others realise they've had their fill of proper Spain, the kind that doesn't come with English menus or air-conditioned coaches.

The village will still be here either way, its church tower marking time against the vast Castilian sky, its inhabitants living the unhurried rhythm they've perfected over centuries. Picón doesn't need tourists. Sometimes that's exactly what makes a place worth visiting.