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about El Peral
Agricultural town with a notable church and hermitage; known for its bread.
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A Village That Doesn't Try
The church bell strikes noon. Nobody hurries. A farmer props his bicycle against Bar La Sidrería, orders a caña, and spends twenty minutes discussing rainfall with the barman. This is El Peral at 790 metres, a Castilian farming hamlet where the cereal plains of La Mancha begin their gentle roll towards the Cuenca hills. There are no souvenir shops, no guided tours, barely a website. The village simply exists, as it has for centuries, and the few visitors who stumble in are treated like neighbours who've been away too long.
What You See When You Stop Driving
Most people pass through on the CM-210, en route between Cuenca and Motilla del Palancar. The village appears suddenly: a white church tower, a cluster of terracotta roofs, then gone. But pull over. Park by the stone trough where village women once washed clothes. Walk uphill past houses whose walls still bear the ghost outlines of former doorways—wide enough for ox-carts, now bricked up for cars that rarely come.
The Iglesia Parroquial sits at the top, not grand, just inevitable. Its bell-tower was rebuilt after lightning in 1932; the stone still looks newer than the 16th-century nave. Inside, the air smells of wax and winter coats. A single bulb illuminates a painted wooden Virgin whose face has been repainted so often her expression has softened into something approaching curiosity. On the back pew someone has left a shopping list: "lentejas, clavos, vino para misa". Practical faith.
From the church terrace the view opens south across a patchwork of almond and vineyard. In February the blossom arrives suddenly, turning bare branches into sudden clouds of white. By July the same trees look burnt, leaves curled against the metallic sky. This is farming at the edge of drought; everything depends on a few summer storms.
The Calendar That Still Rules
Visit on a Tuesday in March and you'll wonder why you bothered. Visit during the fiestas of San Roque in mid-August and you'll wonder where everyone was hiding. The population swells from 700 to several thousand as families return from Madrid, Valencia, even Manchester. Temporary bars appear in garages, whole pigs turn on improvised spits, and teenage cousins who've never met compare Spotify playlists at 3 a.m. For three nights the village square becomes a disco under the stars, bass lines echoing off medieval walls. Then it's over. The rubbish lorries leave at dawn and by September the silence feels almost aggressive.
Easter is different. The procesión del Silencio on Maundy Thursday moves without music, only the shuffle of feet and the creak of platforms bearing Christ and the Virgin. Locals walk hooded in purple, their faces hidden, creating an anonymity that feels medieval. Tourists are welcome but irrelevant; this is for the village, not for show.
Eating (and Drinking) Like You Mean It
Bar La Sidrería isn't trying to be gastro-anything. Plastic chairs, television in the corner permanently tuned to Cuenca TV, menu written on a chalkboard that hasn't changed in years. Order the gazpacho manchego—not the cold tomato soup Brits expect, but a hearty stew of rabbit and flatbread that shepherds once carried into the fields. The morteruelo, a pâté of liver and game, arrives sealed under a layer of flavoured lard that melts into toast. A glass of DO Manchuela red costs €1.80; the barman will refill it from a plastic bottle kept under the counter until you say "basta".
If you're self-catering, the mobile fish van arrives Thursdays at 11 a.m. Queues form early; by noon only sardines remain. The bakery door opens at 7 a.m. sharp, closes when the day's 30 loaves are gone. Ask for pan de pueblo and you'll get a loaf that tastes faintly of woodsmoke—baked in an oven fired with pruned almond branches.
Walking It Off (or Cycling, If You're Keen)
Tracks radiate from the village like spokes, following ancient rights of way between plots of land. A gentle 6-km loop heads south-east towards the abandoned cortijo of Los Alcores, its stone roof long since collapsed. In spring the path edges glow with wild asparagus; locals carry plastic bags and snap off spears at ground level. Further on, a ruined stone hut offers the only shade for miles; step inside and the temperature drops ten degrees. Swallows nest in the rafters, swooping low over fields of saffron crocus planted by hopeful farmers after the crop's recent price surge.
Cyclists find quiet asphalt and forgiving gradients. A 40-km circuit links El Peral with neighbouring Villalgordo del Marquesado and Sotos, passing three wineries happy to fill your water bottle and sell you a litre of young tempranillo for €3. Traffic is so light that farmers wave at every vehicle; on a weekday morning you might meet three cars and a tractor.
The Honest Logistics
Staying overnight requires planning. There is no hotel, no casa rural, not even a village campsite. Closest beds are in Motilla del Palancar, 20 minutes by car, where Casa Rural La Alberquilla offers four doubles from €55 including breakfast. Cuenca's hotels are 45 minutes north-west; the drive back after dinner is dark, with boar and deer regularly crossing the CM-210.
You will need wheels. Public transport means a single weekday bus from Cuenca that arrives at 2 p.m. and leaves at 3 p.m.—barely time for a beer and a sandwich. From the UK: fly to Madrid, pick up a hire car, head east on the A-3 for 90 minutes, then south on the CM-210. Petrol stations are scarce once you leave the motorway; fill up in Tarancón.
Phone signal is patchy inside the village; WhatsApp messages arrive in clumps when you step into the square. Most bars accept cards, but carry cash for the bakery and the fish van. Summer temperatures touch 38 °C; in winter the mercury can fall below –5 °C and the wind cuts straight through British clothing. Spring and autumn are kinder, though April showers here mean brief, violent downpours that turn dirt tracks to glue.
Leaving Without the Sales Pitch
El Peral will not change your life. You will not tick off bucket-list sights or fill memory cards with selfies. What you might do—if you arrive with time to spare and no fixed agenda—is remember what quiet sounds like. The village keeps its own rhythm, indifferent to visitors, and that indifference is oddly refreshing. Drive away at sunset and the church bell rings again, not to say goodbye, simply to mark the hour. The farmer is still at the bar, the same half-finished beer in front of him. Nothing has happened, and everything continues.
