Azuqueca de Henares

The 07:03 Cercanías pulls in from Madrid and empties its cargo of laptop bags and takeaway coffees onto the single platform. Within ten minutes the station car park has cleared, the town's population has effectively doubled, and Azuqueca de Henares goes back to being what it has always been: a working Castilian town that happens to have a railway line.

This is not a place that bothers with the usual Spanish village theatre. There are no geranium-filled balconies competing for Instagram likes, no medieval walls repurposed as tapas routes. Instead you'll find a grid of 1970s apartment blocks, a high street where every third shop sells mobile-phone cases, and a Tuesday market that smells of churros and cheap leather. The surprise is how quickly the utilitarian veneer thins. Turn off Calle Mayor into the old huerta quarter and you're suddenly among low whitewashed houses, vegetable plots guarded by grumpy geese, and elderly residents who still water their tomatoes at dusk using water from the communal acequia.

The town’s name comes from the Arabic al-suqayqa – "the little market" – and commerce remains its pulse. The Mercadillo de Azuqueca spreads across Plaza de España from 09:00 till 14:00 twice a week. Stalls shift with the seasons: pomegranates and quinces in October, forced asparagus from neighbouring El Casar in March, and year-round piles of denim imported by the bale from Valencia. Prices are scribbled on cardboard. A kilo of Campiña cucumbers costs €1.20; haggling marks you immediately as an outsider.

What passes for monuments can be ticked off in half an hour. The Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción sits blunt and square at the top of the hill, its bell tower patched so many times the brickwork resembles a patchwork quilt. Inside, the single nave smells of wax and floor disinfectant; the only splash of colour is a 16th-century Flemish panel of the Crucifixion that local legend claims arrived in a hay cart after being looted from a monastery during the Napoleonic wars. Whether the story holds water matters less than the fact that everyone here repeats it, proof that Azuqueca still writes its own history rather than borrowing Madrid’s.

Walk five minutes south and the town stops abruptly. Wheat fields begin, hemmed in by the A-2 motorway whose traffic roar provides a constant low hum. A narrow tarmac lane continues towards the Henares, the river that gave the province its name. The water is slow and muddy, more useful for irrigation than photographs, yet the bankside path is the town’s unofficial leisure centre. At weekends you’ll share it with mountain-biking teenagers, elderly couples collecting wild asparagus, and the occasional agricultural student from the local agrarian college armed with a plankton net. Kingfishers flash turquoise if you’re patient; herons stand motionless like feathery goalkeepers. The round-trip to the ruined brickworks at El Botardo takes ninety minutes and requires no specialist footwear beyond a sturdy pair of trainers.

Food follows the timetable of the fields. Winter means cocido served in three acts: soup, chickpeas, then meat. Portions are built for people who spend eight hours outdoors; most half-board hotels will happily swap the final sausage course for grilled vegetables if you ask before 11 a.m. Summer calls for migas – fried breadcrumbs laced with garlic and either bacon or green peppers – eaten at 15:00 beneath the awnings of Bar El Parque while the thermometer nudges 38 °C. House wine from the Guadalajara cooperative arrives in 250 ml carafes, chilled just enough to cut through the grease, and costs €2.30. Vegetarians do better than guidebooks suggest: tosta de tomate topped with local oregano, or berenjenas con miel, aubergine chips drizzled with honey that tastes faintly of thyme.

Evenings centre on the plaza rather than the pub. Children career around the bandstand until 23:00 while parents occupy the terraza seats, arguing over whose turn it is to fetch the next round. Try La Gitana for draft mahou served in ridged glasses that frost instantly, or La Cervecita if you prefer craft imports at Madrid prices. Both close at 01:00 sharp; the town’s last bus back from the capital arrives at 00:56, so the barmen have the mop water ready.

The one weekend when normal hours are suspended is the Fiestas de Septiembre, honouring the Virgen de la Soledad. Saturday night belongs to the Desfile de Carrozas: flatbed lorries transformed into papier-mâché satire. One year a float depicted a giant Ryanair plane spewing commuters dressed as tomatoes; another featured a Brexit-themed tumble-dryer tossing out bowler hats. The procession starts late, finishes later, and ends with fireworks launched from the roof of the municipal sports hall. Accommodation within the town fills up six weeks ahead; if you haven’t booked, sleep in Guadalajara and catch the 06:42 commuter train home with the bleary-eyed locals.

Practicalities are refreshingly simple. Madrid-Barajas is 55 minutes away by Cercanías line C-2; trains run twice an hour and a return ticket costs €7.85. From Guadalajara, a regional bus covers the 13 km in twenty minutes for €1.20, though the Saturday midday service is notoriously unreliable. Once here, everything lies within a 1 km diamond bounded by the river, the station, the church and the A-2. Bring cash: many bars refuse cards for sums under €10, and the only ATM that accepts foreign debit cards without charging a surcharge is inside the Cajamar branch on Calle Constitución. Summer temperatures regularly top 40 °C; the municipal pool (€2 entry) opens June to September and sells out of shade umbrellas by 11 a.m. In winter, night frosts are common and most cafés leave the door open regardless – pack a fleece.

Azuqueca will never make the front cover of a Spanish tourist brochure, and that, perversely, is its appeal. It offers the inverse of the Andalusian white-village fantasy: instead of climbing flower-draped lanes to a castle, you walk past allotments to a river that still irrigates the peppers you’ll eat for supper. The town’s modesty is deliberate, its self-confidence hard-won after decades of being labelled merely a commuter dormitory. Stay a night or two and you’ll notice the small victories: the bakery that refuses to open on Sundays however loud the tourists knock, the elderly man who greets the station guard by name every morning, the way the wheat fields glow amber under motorway lights. Azuqueca doesn’t need visitors, but if you do come, arrive without a checklist. The place works better as a conversation than as a destination.