Alustante

Stone Walls and Thin Air

The mobile signal dies somewhere around the 1,200-metre mark, roughly ten minutes before Alustante appears through the windscreen. At 1,400 metres, this is Spain's answer to a Highland hamlet—only with more sun and considerably better migas. The village materialises as a cluster of stone roofs and wooden balconies, huddled against the wind that scours the paramera of Molina country.

What hits first is the quiet. Not the postcard silence of tourism brochures, but the genuine article: no traffic, no muzak, no distant motorway hum. Just air moving through pine needles and the occasional clank of a goat bell from somewhere below the ridge. The population—officially 156, though you'll struggle to spot more than a dozen at any given moment—has built a village that feels like it's holding its breath.

Walking Into the Sky

The old town follows the usual hilltop logic: church at the summit, houses tumbling downhill, streets just wide enough for a donkey and cart. But up here, everything feels stretched. The sky seems bigger. Distances deceive—what looks like a gentle stroll becomes a thigh-burning climb at this altitude, especially when the north wind gets involved.

Start from the church plaza and follow the stone path that skirts the cemetery. Within five minutes you're looking down on Alustante's slate roofs, each one weighted with stones against the gales that can hit 80 kilometres per hour in February. The track becomes a proper hiking trail here, marked with faded yellow paint and the occasional cairn built by shepherds who've worked these slopes since the Reconquista.

The river Gallo starts somewhere beneath you—a silver thread that eventually feeds into the Tagus system. Follow it upstream and you'll reach the nacimiento, the spring where the river emerges from limestone bedrock. It's a forty-minute walk through Scots pine and juniper, with the path gaining height steadily. The water runs cold enough to numb hands even in August, when temperatures down in Guadalajara city are pushing 35°C.

What Grows Between the Rocks

September brings the mushroom hunters. They arrive at dawn with their knives and wicker baskets, following secret routes passed down through families who've collected níscalos here for generations. The locals can spot a poisonous seta from twenty paces—they'll tell you the orange-flecked níscalo proper grows only under certain pines, and that the real prize is the rebollón, a meaty bracket fungus that tastes of earth and smoke.

The restaurant in the village (there's only one open year-round) serves them simply: scrambled with local eggs, or stewed with mountain trout when the Gallo's running clear. Their migas—fried breadcrumbs with chorizo and grapes—arrive in portions that could floor a hungry walker. Wash it down with a clay bowl of caldereta, a lamb stew that tastes like it's been cooking since the last snows melted.

Winter Comes Early

October's when Alustante starts battening down. The first frost usually hits around the 15th, turning the stone streets treacherous by dawn. By December, the village can be cut off for days—snowdrifts block the GU-186, the only road in from Molina de Aragón. The handful of permanent residents stockpile wood and chorizo, settling into a rhythm dictated by daylight hours and the wood-burning stove.

But winter reveals the landscape's bones. Without summer's haze, you can see clear to the Moncayo massif, sixty kilometres west. Griffon vultures ride the thermals above the cliffs, their wings catching morning light like burnished bronze. The rooks that nest in the church tower provide the only soundtrack, calling across valleys where wolves have started returning after a century's absence.

Practicalities for the Curious

Getting here requires commitment. From Madrid, it's two hours on the A-2 to Guadalajara, then another ninety minutes through country that gets progressively wilder. The last thirty kilometres wind through pine forests where wild boar cross the road at dusk—drive accordingly. There's no petrol station after Molina de Aragón, so fill up.

Accommodation is limited to three rural houses and the Apartamentos Turísticos La Tejera, converted from an old textile workshop. Book ahead—even in shoulder season, walkers have been known to sleep in their cars when the village fills up with mushroom hunters or the August fiesta crowd. The apartments run €60-80 per night and include kitchens, useful since the village shop opens only when someone's around to unlock it.

Weather changes fast. Pack layers even in July—afternoon storms can drop temperatures fifteen degrees in twenty minutes. Good boots are essential; the limestone paths eat trainers for breakfast. Bring cash too—nobody's taking cards up here, and the nearest ATM is twenty kilometres away in Molina.

The August Invasion

For three days each August, Alustante's population quadruples. Descendants of families who left for Barcelona or Madrid in the 1960s return to houses shuttered since last summer. The plaza fills with children who've never lived here but know every alley's shortcut. There's a disco in the sports hall (village definition: corrugated iron shed with coloured lights), paella for a hundred in the school playground, and a procession where the Virgin gets carried through streets suddenly loud with accents from three continents.

Then it's over. By the 20th, the last car loaded with suitcases and vacuum-packed chorizo winds down the mountain. The silence returns, more profound for having been temporarily banished. The village settles back into its stone skin, waiting for autumn and the mushroom hunters, for winter and the wolves, for whatever small dramas unfold between the wind and the weather vane.