Villarrubia de los Ojos

The church bell strikes midday and every chimney in Villarrubia de los Ojos suddenly sprouts a stork. One moment the skyline is blank white plaster; the next it’s a chessboard of stick nests, each bird clapping its beak like castanets. This is the daily alarm clock the town trusts more than any mobile phone, and it is the first thing a visitor notices before the heat of the plain makes thinking difficult.

Plain Speaking

Altitude 624 m means the air is thinner than on the coast and the sun carries real weight. In July thermometers touch 40 °C without effort; by mid-afternoon the main street, Avenida de la Constitución, falls silent except for the swish of irrigators spraying wheat. Winter swings the opposite way: night temperatures dip below freezing, the cereal stubble turns silver with frost and the same storks hunch like feathered umbrellas. Spring and autumn are the comfortable windows—late March brings green wheat and almond blossom, mid-October smells of newly pressed Valdepeñas grapes.

The town sits 30 km south-east of Ciudad Real, dead-centre in the great Castilian cereal bowl. There is no railway; the A-4 motorway skirts past at a respectful distance, so traffic is still mostly tractors. UK visitors usually fly into Madrid, collect a hire car and slide south for 90 minutes. Tolls are modest—under €10—and petrol is cheaper than at home. Once arrived you can park anywhere that isn’t a junction; yellow lines are rare and traffic wardens rarer.

What the Name Cannot Tell You

“Ojos” means “eyes” and once referred to the springs that bubbled where the river Guadiana surfaced. Over-extraction for agriculture dried them up decades ago, but the name sticks, a reminder that water here has always been politics. The small Museo de las Lagunas, tucked beside the health centre, tells the story with photographs of reed cutters and rice planters who worked wetlands that have since become tomato fields. Entry is free; ring the bell and the caretaker will appear with a key and a five-minute lecture on aquifer collapse. It is worth the detour before driving the 15 km to the Parque Nacional de las Tablas de Daimiel, where boardwalks still float over surviving marsh and glossy ibis replace storks on the telegraph poles.

Eating Without Showmanship

British visitors expecting a seafront promenade of laminated menus will be either disappointed or relieved. Lunch is a single seating: 2 pm sharp, finished by 4 pm when the kitchen sweeps down. Aldaba, on Calle Ancha, ranks top on TripAdvisor UK for good reason—grilled lamb cutlets €12, pisto manchego with a fried egg €8, house red from the Valdepeñas cooperative €2.50 a glass and no surcharge for bread. Arrive at 1:45 pm or you will queue; locals treat Sunday lunch like church, only with more wine.

Weekday alternatives are simpler. Bar California bakes its own migas—fried breadcrumbs with grapes and bits of chorizo—then serves them in a wooden bowl big enough for two. Vegetarians survive on queso manchego curado, aged for twelve months and cut in proper wedges, not the tiny cubes that appear on Costa buffets. If you need something to take home, the cooperative shop on the industrial estate sells 5-litre plastic flagons of tempranillo for €9—decanting required, airport security discouraged.

Birds, Bikes and Flat Horizons

The Camino Natural de los Ojos del Guadiana starts opposite the cemetery and runs 17 km along a gravel service road once used by spring keepers. It is pancake flat, good for hybrid bikes or stout walking shoes; you will meet more rabbits than humans. Interpretive boards explain how the river used to vanish underground then reappear—useful knowledge when the only shade is an occasional poplar.

Serious birders head instead to the Laguna de Navalcaballo, a wildlife reserve 8 km west signed only by a faded wooden duck. A hide overlooks reeds where purple heron and little bittern breed; UK visitors have compared it favourably to Cley in Norfolk, minus the entry fee. Bring binoculars and water—there is no café, and the single bench faces east, useless after midday.

Fiestas and Fireworks

The Virgen de las Virtudes fiesta (15-31 July) turns the town into a nightly soundscape of marching bands and barrages that continue until 2 am. British families renting village houses have been known to flee to Toledo for the final weekend. September’s romería is gentler: at dawn on the third Saturday half the population walks 5 km to an isolated chapel, carrying a statue of the Virgin balanced on a hay cart. By 11 am everyone is back in the Plaza de España drinking anise and coffee; by 3 pm the square smells of rosemary and roast lamb. It is the best moment to witness Villarrubia as a working community rather than a backdrop.

Practical Notes Without the Bullet Parade

Cash still rules. The solitary Santander ATM beside the town hall often empties on Friday evening; most bars refuse cards under €10 and the Saturday market stallholders accept only notes. Shops reopen after siesta around 5:30 pm, 6 pm in winter—plan accordingly. Thursday is half-day; the bakery closes at 1 pm and does not reopen until Friday. If you need a pharmacy out of hours, a rotating rota is posted on the door; instructions are in Spanish only, so take a photo and ask in the café opposite for translation.

Accommodation is limited to three small guesthouses and a handful of Airbnb flats above family houses. None has a pool; instead you will get thick stone walls, ceiling fans and the distant thud of someone hammering olives. Prices hover around €60 a night year-round—there is no high season because tour buses still prefer Consuegra and its windmills 50 km north.

Last Light

When the sun drops behind the grain silo the storks return, clattering like wooden washing pegs. The wheat glows bronze, the temperature falls ten degrees in as many minutes and the smell of charcoal drifts from rooftop barbecues. There is no souvenir stall, no flamenco tablao, no ice-cream parlour open past midnight. Instead you get a bench, a view straight to the horizon and the growing realisation that the town’s greatest luxury is space—something increasingly rare on either side of the Channel. Drive away after breakfast and the plain swallows Villarrubia in the rear-view mirror; the memory, however, lingers longer than the journey home.