Luciana

The church bell strikes noon and the village stops. A woman in an apron pauses between the bakery and her doorstep. Two men mid-conversation outside the bar let their cigarettes burn down an extra centimetre. Even the hunting dogs chained in courtyard shade seem to hold their breath. In Luciana, timekeeping still belongs to bronze rather than mobile phones, and the day is portioned into six metallic slices that echo off whitewashed walls and the surrounding cork oaks.

A grid of streets, not a circuit

Luciana sits 620 metres above sea level on the southern flank of the Montes de Toledo, 48 kilometres west of Ciudad Real. The A-4 from Madrid leaves you at the Puerto Lápice junction; from there it is another 35 minutes on the CR-504, a road that narrows until the verges brush both wing mirrors. The village arrives suddenly: first the church tower, then a scatter of two-storey houses the colour of fresh yoghurt, and finally the bar-front terraces that spill into the single traffic lane. Parking is uncomplicated—there are no meters, no attendants, and rarely more than four vehicles competing for shade.

The centre is a T-junction with a name: Plaza de la Constitución. Everything worth seeing lies within a three-minute radius. The parish church of San Pedro Apóstol, rebuilt in the seventeenth century after a fire, has a doorway carved from local limestone that still bears the chisel marks of itinerant masons paid partly in wool. Inside, the altarpiece is gilded with American gold that arrived via Seville when the village population was ten times today’s 368. Admission is free; the key hangs on a nail inside the bar opposite if the door is locked. Ask for Paco and mention you have come desde Inglaterra—he will accompany you, switching off the football commentary as a matter of courtesy.

Cork, acorns and the smell of wet earth

Walk fifty paces past the last house and the ground turns burnt umber, littered with acorn caps. This is dehesa country: open woodland managed for cork, charcoal and free-ranging Iberian pork. The trees are holm and cork oak, spaced so widely that their crowns never touch. In October locals strip the cork in rectangular panels that bleed rust-red; the same trees will be harvested again in nine years, roughly the time it takes a British child to progress through primary school. Between the trunks you may see concrete feeding stations—stone troughs where acorns are supplemented only when the mast crop fails. The pigs arrive in October and leave in February, by which time their haunches have earned the right to be called jamón ibérico de bellota. A single hind leg, once cured, fetches €180 in Valencia or Madrid; here the price is closer to €120 if you collect.

There are no way-marked footpaths, only the traditional livestock drove roads called cañadas. The widest, two metres across, heads north-east towards the seasonal stream of Arroyo de la Chorrera. Follow it for twenty minutes and the woodland folds into a shallow ravine where bramble and wild rose provide sudden cover for roe deer. Spring water surfaces after heavy rain; in August the bed is a procession of polished stones the size of cricket balls. Return along the ridge and the village appears below like a white handkerchief dropped on a brown blanket.

What arrives on the daily van

Luciana’s only shop doubles as the post office and opens when the proprietor finishes feeding her chickens. Bread arrives from a bakery in Puerto Lápice at 11 a.m.; if you need it earlier, the bar sells yesterday’s loaf for 80 cents. Fresh fish reaches the village once a week, on Thursday, in a refrigerated van whose loudspeaker plays the opening bars of La Vie en Rose. Locals emerge with plastic bags and opinions about the merits of hake versus conger eel. The nearest supermarket is 22 kilometres away in Daimiel—stock up before you arrive if you are self-catering.

Game, clay pots and second helpings

Order lunch after 2 p.m. or you will eat alone. The Bar Nuevo (est. 1978) offers a three-course menú del día for €12 that begins with garlic soup poured over a poached egg and ends with arroz con leche thick enough to hold a spoon upright. Mid-week specials include ciervo en salsa—venison stewed with bay leaves and a splash of tinto de Valdepeñas. Vegetarians can request ajoarriero, a mash of potato, pepper and egg originally invented by muleteers who carried no meat. House wine arrives in a clay porrón; tipping is optional because the price already includes servicio. If the bar is full, locals will squeeze along the bench to make space. Refuse the first offer of more food and a second plate will appear anyway—acceptance is simpler.

When the fiesta outruns the village

During the August fiestas the population swells to roughly 1,200. Emigrants who left for Barcelona or Bilbao in the 1970s return with grandchildren who speak Spanish with Catalan accents. The council hires a portable bullring the size of a tennis court; tickets cost €15 for front-row benches where sawdust cushions the splinters. Night-time dances finish at 6 a.m., when the DJ plays My Heart Will Go On as a signal to go home. Book accommodation early: the nearest hotel, in Almodóvar del Campo, fills two months ahead. The polite option is to ask at the ayuntamiento—the town hall keeps a list of villagers willing to rent a spare room for €30 a night. Bathrooms are shared, but the linen is ironed and the breakfast coffee strong enough to dissolve the spoon.

Winter silence and the smoke of oak logs

From November to March the village belongs to the retired and the hunters. Daytime temperatures hover around 9 °C; at night the thermometer touches zero. Houses lack central heating—residents wheel oil-filled radiators from room to room or burn oak logs in grates designed for coal. The upside is clarity: on windless mornings the distant Sierra de Madrona appears 40 kilometres away, sharp as cut glass. Bring a fleece and slippers; stone floors conduct cold directly into British socks. The bar installs a gas heater that roars like a Harrier jump jet; position yourself within two metres or frost will form on your beer.

Leaving without a souvenir

There is no gift shop. If you want something to take home, ask Paco for an empty bottle of tinto from last night’s table; wash it, let it dry, and wedge a cork from the forest floor into the neck. Customs will not mind, and the bottle will smell for months of wine and oak smoke—an honest memento of a place that has not reorganised itself for inspection. The bell will toll as you drive away; in the rear-view mirror the village shrinks to the size of a postage stamp, then disappears round a bend. Back on the motorway the lorries resume their overtaking lane, and the silence you carried for a day is replaced by engine noise.