Castillo-Albaráñez

The church bell hasn't rung for Sunday service in three years. Its rope hangs frayed, moving only when wind sweeps across the 950-metre plateau where Castillo-Albaráñez clings to existence. Twenty-two souls remain here, scattered among stone houses that once sheltered two hundred. The village sits forty kilometres northeast of Cuenca, where the Alcarria's limestone plains meet skies so vast they make the houses seem smaller than they already are.

The Arithmetic of Abandonment

Every morning, María Angeles counts the village's remaining inhabitants as she waters geraniums on her balcony. She knows who's left by counting the chimneys that still smoke in winter. The maths is brutal: three deaths last year, no births since 1998. The primary school closed in 1986; its playground swings rusted solid decades ago. Yet someone maintains the flower boxes beneath the church's single nave, and fresh paint brightens three doorways along the main street. These small acts of defiance against decay matter more than any monument.

The houses tell their own stories in layers. Adobe walls dating from the 1700s support newer stone additions from the 1920s, when the village peaked at 180 residents. Roof beams of chestnut, hand-hewn and blackened with age, poke through collapsed tiles like broken ribs. Some properties have surrendered entirely to the elements, their ground floors filled with sheep dung and wild fennel. Others sport satellite dishes incongruous against medieval masonry, feeding television to the handful of pensioners who refuse to leave their birthplaces.

Walking Through What Remains

The village requires exactly eleven minutes to traverse from end to end, assuming you pause to read the faded ceramic plaque marking where the bakery stood until 1973. No maps exist for the footpaths radiating outward, just sheep tracks and the memory of medieval drove roads. Head south and you'll reach an abandoned threshing floor within twenty minutes, its stone circumference perfect for a picnic if the wind isn't blowing. Continue another hour and the land drops into the Cañada Real, an ancient livestock route where bronze-age traders once drove cattle south to Granada.

Spring brings the plateau alive with brief, furious colour. Wild tulips push through limestone scree between April and mid-May, followed by purple thyme that flavours the local honey carried by the last two beekeepers in the municipality. Autumn strips everything back to ochre and grey, when the distant peaks of the Cuenca mountains wear their first snow like icing sugar. Winter arrives suddenly, often overnight in November, transforming the access road into a skating rink for weeks. The village's altitude means snow lingers long after Cuenca's streets have thawed.

The Café That Isn't There

Visitors expecting sustenance face harsh realities. Castillo-Albaráñez supports zero commercial establishments. No bar serves coffee. No shop sells bread. The last grocer shuttered in 1992, her wooden counters now rotting behind plywood-covered windows. Smart travellers stock up in Cuenca before heading out, packing water particularly—the village well dried up during the 2017 drought and never fully recovered. The nearest proper restaurant sits seventeen kilometres away in Buenache de Alarcón, where Casa Segundo serves roast lamb that justifies the journey, assuming the mountain road hasn't been washed out by flash floods.

What the village offers instead is acoustic space. Stand in the central plaza at 3pm on a Tuesday and you'll hear nothing human-made. No cars. No voices. Just wind scraping across stone and the occasional clank of a distant sheep bell. This silence proves disconcerting for city dwellers, who often develop headaches from the lack of ambient noise. Others find it addictive, returning year after year to rent one of three houses refurbished by descendants of original inhabitants. These rentals operate on trust—send an email, transfer money, collect keys from María Angeles who keeps them in a biscuit tin beneath her television.

Practicalities for the Determined

Reaching Castillo-Albaráñez requires commitment. No public transport serves the village. From Cuenca, take the CM-210 towards Beteta, then turn onto the CU-V-9031 after twenty-three kilometres. The final twelve kilometres twist upward through juniper scrub and abandoned almond groves, the asphalt narrowing to single-track with passing places. Meeting another vehicle means reversing to the nearest widened section, a manoeuvre that becomes interesting when Spanish drivers refuse to yield. Hire cars should be compact; the village's single street was designed for mules, not SUVs.

Accommodation options remain limited to those three private houses, sleeping four to six people each. Expect to pay €80-120 per night, with bookings essential during Easter and August when scattered families return for brief reunions. Bring everything: food, drinking water, toiletries, first-aid supplies. Mobile reception exists only on the ridge five minutes' walk north, where one bar of 4G allows text messages if you stand on the rock shaped like a bull's head. Electricity functions reliably these days, though the village generator sounds like a tractor having an asthma attack.

The Future Written in Stone

Climate change threatens what little remains. Rainfall has dropped twenty percent over two decades, turning former wheat fields to scrub. The juniper trees that anchor the soil grow stressed, their roots exposed by flash floods that arrive every September instead of every five years. Young emigrants who left for Madrid and Barcelona send money for roof repairs but won't return permanently; they've grown accustomed to broadband and sushi delivery. The village survives on inertia and stubbornness, funded by pensions and the occasional sale of an inherited property to someone seeking isolation.

Visit anyway. Walk the empty streets at dawn when golden light transforms ruined walls into something approaching beauty. Listen to the wind carry scents of thyme and distant woodsmoke. Understand that places like Castillo-Albaráñez represent Spain's past, present and probable future rolled into one limestone ridge. Just don't expect entertainment, coffee or conversation. Bring self-sufficiency and curiosity. Leave before loneliness becomes contagious, carrying with you the memory of silence so complete it has weight.