Hellín

The first thing that strikes a visitor is the sound of practice. Not flamenco guitar, not café chatter, but the low thud of drums drifting from half-shuttered garages on Calle Granada. In Hellín, 578 m above sea-level on the baking edge of Castilla-La Mancha, children learn to play tambores before they can read music. The town of 30,000 keeps its noisiest tradition locked up for eleven months, then lets it explode the week before Easter, when 20,000 snares echo off ochre walls. Turn up at any other time and you get the dress-rehearsal – free, unvarnished and usually accompanied by a grandmother hawking homemade aniseed biscuits for a euro.

A town that forgot to prettify itself

Hellín makes no effort to be “picturesque”. The A-30 sweeps past the western flank, lorries shake the balconies, and the river Mundo is often a string of pebbles between concrete banks. Yet the disregard for cosmetic tourism is precisely what gives the place traction. Wander south from the modern Plaza de la Constitución and you slip into a grid of narrower streets where brick has weathered to cinnamon, iron balconies sag under geraniums, and every other doorway hides a tiny bar serving cheese that tastes like Manchego but costs half the price and comes with free olives. English is scarce; download Spanish offline and expect to mime the word for vegetarian (vegetariano works, but so does pointing at vegetables).

The Iglesia de la Asunción dominates the skyline with a Renaissance façade patched after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Inside, the retablo glitters with gilt cherubs who have seen better centuries; volunteers switch the lights on if you hover long enough. Climb the tower (€2, cash only) and the plain of Los Campos de Hellín rolls out – almond groves giving way to dry cereal steppe, then the jagged outline of Sierra del Segura. Look east and you can just make out the bulldozed contours of Tolmo de Minateda, an Iberian-Roman-Visigoth-Moorish sandwich of a settlement now being painstakingly brushed clean by archaeologists from Albacete university. It is five kilometres out; a marked footpath leaves from the petrol station on the CM-412 and takes ninety minutes if you carry water and a hat. The site is open most weekends, entry free, with bilingual boards that read like crib notes for a forgotten civilisation.

Food built for harvesters, not influencers

Lunch starts at 14:00 sharp and finishes an hour later when the shutters drop. Try Casa Ramón on Calle General Primo de Rivera for gazpacho manchego – not the cold tomato soup Brits expect, but a gamey stew of rabbit and flatbread soaked in saffron stock. A full portion feeds two; ask for media raciónes if travelling solo. Caldo con pelotas, a peppery meat-ball broth, appears when the tramontana wind drags temperatures below 10 °C, even in April. Vegetarians survive on escalivada (roasted aubergine and pepper) and local wine from Almansa that costs €2.50 a glass and tastes like blackberry crumble. Pudding is torta de Hellín, a dry sponge travellers either dunk in coffee or use as packing material. Buy one for €4 from Pastelería Lozano and decide which camp you fall into.

Drums, dust and devotion

If you can, time your visit for the Feria del Tambor. Accommodation triples in price and must be booked months ahead, but the payoff is sensory overload. From 22:00 on the Friday before Palm Sunday, processions of hooded cofradías march to a beat that starts as a heartbeat and ends as thunder. Ear-plugs are handed out by the Red Cross; take them. Children as young as six haul drums taller than their torsos; by 02:00 the whole town smells of candle wax, sweat and anise. The following morning a quieter pilgrimage leaves for the Ermita de la Virgen del Rosario on the northern hill – a forty-minute stroll past abandoned greenhouses and the whiff of wild thyme. The views stretch to Murcia’s olive plantations; the ermita itself is locked, but the doorkeeper usually appears if you loiter with intent.

Outside fiesta week Hellín reverts to provincial slumber. The Semana Santa museum on Calle Nueva opens Tuesday to Saturday, entrance €3, and displays blood-stained robes, 18th-century drum skins and a video that lets you experience 120 decibels at safe volume. Afterwards, nip across the road to the Arco del Salvador, a twelfth-century Islamic gate repurposed by the Christians, now wedged between a mobile-phone shop and a bakery. No rope, no ticket, just a plaque recording that this was once the only way into town after dark. Touch the stone and you’ll find it polished smooth by 900 years of sleeves.

Getting there, getting out

Hellín sits on the AVE spur between Madrid and Albacete. From London, fly Stansted to Alicante (2 h 20 min), then take the ALSA coach from the airport forecourt direct to Hellín (2 h 30 min, €16). Trains are quicker – Alicante Terminal to Hellín in two hours – but require a shuttle into town first. Car hire opens the hinterland: the limestone chimneys of Tollos de Minateda are 25 minutes north-west, a mini-Bryce Canyon minus the entrance fee and the crowds. Footing is loose; trainers suffice, but avoid midday heat May–September when the thermometer kisses 40 °C.

Stay at Hotel Santa Quiteria on Avenida de la Constitución – functional, €55 a double, with underground parking where reception lends you a hose to wash desert dust off the hire car. There is also a new municipal albergue inside the old train sheds, €18 for a bunk, kitchen included; book via the tourist office beside the town hall. British visitors report being the only English-speakers in both, so prepare to become the evening’s entertainment.

The honest verdict

Hellín will not give you honey-coloured arcades or sunset selfies. It offers instead the soundtrack of a Spain that still keeps its own time: drums at dusk, market traders shouting “¡A la una!” as they slash herb prices at 13:00, and church bells that count the hours for people who have not yet surrendered to the smartphone. Come for the fiesta if you crave chaos; come any other time if you want to remember what the country felt like before the coast sold its soul to concrete. Bring ear-plugs, sturdy shoes and a phrasebook – and expect to leave with a drum-beat that lingers long after the return flight touches down.