Castejón

A Village that Doesn’t Whisper – It Stops

The first thing you notice is the hush. Not the polite quiet of an English village green, but the absolute, wind-lifted silence of a place that has lost more people than it has kept. At 850 m on the Alcarria plateau, Castejón’s 124 remaining residents live 3 km above sea level in all but name; even the swallows sound surprised to be here.

There is no souvenir shop, no interpretive centre, no tasteful beige sign pointing to a car park. Instead, the CM-310 spits you out beside a stone trough where two elderly men might be discussing rainfall in centimetres, not millimetres. If you arrive after 14:00 the village feels abandoned; in fact everyone is simply behind thick adobe walls, waiting for the oven-blast of early afternoon to pass.

What Passes for Skyline

Castejón’s “monument” is its parish church, finished in 1758 when the village counted closer to 400 souls. The tower is square, the stone the colour of dry toast, and the door is locked unless the priest drives over from Zarzuela on Sunday. Peer through the iron grille and you’ll see a single nave, plaster washed a queasy mint green, and a Christ figure whose painted blood is the brightest thing for miles. Photography is pointless; the building only makes sense when the bells clang across empty wheatfields at 13:00, reminding the few remaining farmers that time, like soil moisture, is slipping away.

Around the church run three streets – Calle Real, Calle de la Iglesia, Calle de los Caños – their width dictated by the space needed to turn a cart and two mules in 1890. Houses are built from whatever the ground offered up: granite for corners, adobe for infill, clay tiles curved like a Moorish arch. Many roofs are bowed in the middle, surrendering to decades of snow that barely reaches the ground before it sublimates in the dry plateau air. A couple of façades have been re-rendered in pistachio or apricot, the Alcarrian equivalent of keeping up with the Joneses.

Walking in Circles, Pleasantly

You can circumnavigate Castejón in twelve minutes, but the surrounding web of agricultural tracks invites longer loops. Strike east on the sheep-track past the ruined threshing floor and you’ll reach the abandoned hamlet of El Añadío in 40 min; stone walls still stand, but roofs have collapsed to reveal single rooms where a family once slept, cooked and kept a donkey. Go west and the path drops into the shallow Barranco del Cagajón, noisy only when the dog from the cortijo below decides you’re worth barking at.

Spring brings a brief, almost indecent display of colour: poppies splashed between wheat rows, tiny irises under the oaks. By July the palette reverts to gold and soot-black where stubble has been burned. October turns the stubble fields to velvet brown and releases the scent of damp earth, the closest this landscape comes to perfume.

Carry water; there are no fountains after the village trough. A decent Ordnance Survey-style map doesn’t exist – the Spanish army still classifies 1:25 000 sheets as “reserved” – so screenshot satellite imagery before you lose signal. Expect to see booted eagles, the occasional hoopoe and, if you’re quiet, a red fox trotting along the stone wall like a commuter who missed the bus.

Eating (or Not) Locally

Cantejón itself offers zero hospitality. The last bar closed when its owner retired to Valencia in 2018; the grocery shop opens two mornings a week and stocks tinned sardines, UHT milk and something claiming to be cheddar that tastes of plasticine. Plan accordingly:

• Pack a picnic in Tarancón, 12 km west, where the Mercadona sells manchego curado for €12 a kilo and baguettes that haven’t yet turned to cricket bats.
• Sunday visitors should bring everything; even the petrol station shutters stay down until Monday.
• If you’re self-catering, the Casa Rural La Fuente (two bedrooms, wood-burning stove, €90 per night) lets you grill lamb chops while swallows nest in the eaves. Book by WhatsApp – the owner, Paco, answers after the 21:00 news.

For a sit-down meal you’ll drive 20 min to Belmonte: Mesón el Molino does gazpacho pastor (a hearty lamb and garlic stew) and a half-decent house rosé that won’t trigger a hangover before the mountain road back.

When to Bother, When to Stay Away

April–June is the sweet spot: daytime 22 °C, nights cool enough for a jumper, wheat shimmering like a green sea. September repeats the trick with added purple crocuses under the holm oaks. Mid-July to mid-August is brutal; thermometers kiss 38 °C by 11 a.m. and the lone bench in the plaza becomes a skillet. Winter is crisp, often bright, but fog can lock the plateau for days and the CM-310 ices over where the shadow of the telecom mast never lifts.

Fiestas happen around 15 August. The population quadruples as emigrants return from Madrid and Valencia. There is a foam party for toddlers, a mass in honour of the Virgin, and a disco in the polideportivo that thumps until 06:00. If you want “authentic”, come the week before; if you want sleep, book elsewhere.

The Honest Exit

Castejón will not change your life. You will not tick off a UNESCO site or brag about a hidden-waterfall Instagram. You might, however, remember what rural Europe sounded like before gift shops and stag weekends – just wind, distant machinery and your own footsteps echoing off stone. Drive away at dusk and the village shrinks to a yellowish smudge between wheat and sky, the church bell faint even with windows open. Ten kilometres down the road the phone regains two bars; emails flood in, podcasts resume, the twenty-first century reassembles itself. That silence you leave behind costs nothing, which is exactly what the village has left.