Retamoso de la Jara

The retama blooms yellow against 608 metres of altitude, and suddenly the name makes sense. Retamoso de la Jara—literally "the place of broom"—sits where Castilla-La Mancha's flatlands ripple into something rougher. Ninety-seven people call this home. Not ninety-seven thousand. Ninety-seven souls who've watched their village shrink, then stubbornly hold its ground.

Morning in the Dehesa

Dawn arrives differently at this height. The air carries bite even in May, and the dehesa—that carefully managed wilderness of oaks and pasture—stretches silver-green to every horizon. Wild boar tracks crisscross the sandy paths. Imperial eagles circle overhead, waiting for thermals that build slowly in the thin air.

This is working landscape, not wilderness. The holm oaks support Iberian pigs whose ham sells for £90 a kilo in Madrid, though here the farmers earn a fraction. The cork harvest still matters; you'll see axe scars on ancient trunks where bark was stripped last summer. Walk softly—this is someone's livelihood, not a theme park.

The village itself clusters around a church that wouldn't rate a second glance in Toledo or Cuenca. Here, it's everything. The stone houses lean into the slope, their walls thick enough to swallow mobile phone signals. That's not necessarily accidental.

What Passes for Action

There are no attractions. Really. No gift shops, no interpretation centres, no craft workshops flogging overpriced ceramics. What you get instead: the sound of your own footsteps echoing off walls that have stood four centuries, and conversations that start because you've stopped to read the village's single information board.

The main street takes eight minutes to walk end-to-end. Longer if you stop to examine the 1950s metalwork on balconies, or chat with Antonio who repairs agricultural machinery in a workshop that smells of diesel and decades. He'll tell you about the time they tried to introduce wild deer for hunting. "Lasted one winter," he'll say. "Wolves got them all."

Walking tracks exist, but they're not signed in English. Or Spanish, mostly. You'll need the Wikiloc app and offline maps, because phone coverage drops to nothing once you leave the village perimeter. The most popular route—a 12-kilometre loop to the abandoned hamlet of Navalosa—takes you through land that looks unchanged since the Reconquista. Take water. More than you think. The altitude dehydrates faster than you'd expect.

The Food Question

Here's where it gets complicated. Retamoso itself has no restaurant. Zero. There's a bar that opens sporadically—think Thursday to Sunday, lunch only, and don't bank on it. Your dining options are:

• Pack sandwiches and eat among the broom flowers
• Drive 20 minutes to Navahermosa, where Casa Toribio serves proper game stews for €12
• Knock on doors and hope someone's making migas (fried breadcrumb dish) for family lunch

The latter actually works more often than you'd imagine. Village etiquette: bring a bottle of something decent, offer to pay, accept refusal, leave €20 under the salt cellar anyway.

If you score an invitation, you'll eat gazpacho that's nothing like the Andalusian cold soup—this is hot, thick with game and paprika, served in earthenware bowls that predate democracy. The bread will be stale, deliberately. That's not poverty; that's tradition working exactly as intended.

Seasons of Silence

Summer brutalises this place. Temperatures hit 40°C by 11am, and the flies own the afternoon. August brings fiestas—three days when the population balloons to maybe 300, when emigrants return from Madrid and Barcelona, when the church bell actually rings. Book accommodation now? You can't. There isn't any. The nearest hotel is 35 minutes away in Navahermosa, and it books solid for the fiestas six months ahead.

Winter strips everything back. Continental climate at altitude means frost in October, snow by December. The track to Navalosa becomes impassable. Locals stockpile firewood and disappear inside by 4pm. Visit then and you'll find the bar definitely closed, possibly until March.

Spring works—April through early June when the retama blooms and temperatures hover around 22°C. Or autumn: September's harvest, October's mushroom season, November's first woodsmoke. These are the windows when the village feels generous rather than merely enduring.

Getting Here, Getting Away

No trains. No buses either, not really—one daily service from Toledo that might stop if you flag it down at the junction, might not. You'll need a car, and you'll need to like narrow mountain roads. The last hour from the A4 motorway involves constant gear changes, steep gradients, and the occasional free-range pig that's definitely not moving for anyone.

Fill up in Navahermosa. The village pump hasn't worked since 2019, and the next petrol is 45 kilometres. Phone coverage dies completely in the valleys—download offline maps before you leave the main road.

The Honest Truth

Retamoso de la Jara doesn't need you. It barely notices you're there, and that's precisely its value. This is a place that existed before tourism and will exist after it, where the elderly still measure wealth in hectares and rainfall, where young people leave and some—miraculously—return.

You won't find enlightenment here. You won't find Instagram moments or life-changing epiphanies. What you'll find is a village that's chosen not to die, not to become another pretty façade selling overpriced coffee to weekenders from the capital. That choice becomes rarer every year in Spain, and witnessing it—quietly, respectfully—might be worth the drive.

Bring walking boots and realistic expectations. Leave the drone at home. And if the bar's closed when you arrive, well, that's not a bug. That's the entire point.