Pardos

The road to Pardos climbs past the last proper petrol station at Molina de Aragón, then keeps climbing. By the time the village appears—forty stone houses huddled on a ridge at 1,185 metres—the thermometer in your hire car has dropped eight degrees from the Madrid plain. Welcome to Spain's high, empty centre, where the map turns from yellow to brown and the silence starts to hurt your ears.

A Village that Winter Forgot to Leave

Pardos doesn't do gentle introductions. The first thing visitors notice, even in May, is the wind. It sweeps up from the surrounding barrancos with nothing to break it for fifty kilometres, carrying dust from Aragón and the smell of wild thyme. Locals—there are about forty left—have evolved a particular gait: shoulders hunched, head down, moving between doorways like sailors between squalls.

The architecture reflects this perpetual assault. Houses sit low to the ground, walls nearly a metre thick, windows the size of postboxes. They're built from what's underneath them: honey-coloured limestone hacked from the ridge itself, roofed with curved Arab tiles designed to shrug off snow. Most stand empty now, their wooden balconies sagging like broken ribs. The few that remain occupied have plastic-sealed windows and satellite dishes pointed skyward in defiance of the elements.

Winter here isn't a season so much as a state of siege. Roads close for weeks when snow drifts across the CM-2105. The village shop—really just a room in someone's house—stocks up in October and doesn't reopen until Easter. When the white stuff arrives, Pardos becomes an island. Children from the outlying farms board in Molina from November to March rather than risk the daily journey. It's not unusual to meet teenagers who've never seen their village in daylight during January.

What Passes for a Centre

The heart of Pardos isn't a plaza but a slope. Calle Real tilts at fifteen degrees, paved originally for donkeys rather than cars. Halfway up sits the Iglesia de San Bartolomé, its tower visible from twenty kilometres away across the parameras. Inside, the air smells of beeswax and damp stone. The altarpiece, painted by an anonymous nineteenth-century craftsman, depicts Saint Bartholomew flayed alive in colours that remain improbably vivid. Someone's knitted him a jumper for winter—more practical than theological, covering the gore.

Beyond the church, the street dissolves into a maze of alleys barely shoulder-wide. Here you'll find what passes for Pardos' entertainment infrastructure: one bar, open Thursday to Sunday, serving Estrella Galicia at €1.80 a caña. They don't do food beyond crisps and tinned olives, but owner Miguel will fry you an egg if you ask nicely and he's in the mood. Payment is cash only; the card machine died in 2019 and nobody's bothered to replace it.

The village's other commercial venture is less expected. In a converted stable near the cemetery, María Jesús runs a weaving workshop using wool from her thirty-strong flock of Churra sheep. She'll sell you a rug for €120—natural cream with stripes the colour of local earth—or teach you to spin for €15 an hour. It's not advertised anywhere; you'll only know about it if you knock on her green door and wait for the bolt to draw back.

Walking into Nothing

The real attraction starts where the tarmac ends. Pardos sits on the edge of the Sierra del Señorío de Molina, 50,000 hectares of near-empty badlands. Marked trails don't exist; instead, there's a network of drove roads carved by centuries of transhumance. The most straightforward route follows the Cañada Real de la Mancha south-east towards the abandoned village of Saelices. It's eight kilometres each way across a landscape that makes the Yorkshire Dales look positively lush.

Summer walking starts at dawn and finishes by eleven. Temperatures might touch 35°C by midday, but the altitude keeps nights refreshingly cool. Spring and autumn are kinder, though October can bring sudden storms that turn dry ravines into raging torrents within minutes. Winter walkers need proper gear: the wind chill at this height can push -15°C, and mobile reception vanishes entirely once you drop into the valleys.

What you're walking through isn't wilderness but something more interesting—land that's been grazed, burned, cultivated and abandoned repeatedly since the Reconquista. Holm oaks cluster in hollows where medieval pig herders once corralled their animals. Terraces climb impossible slopes, now colonised by lavender and wild asparagus. Half-ruined stone huts offer shelter from the wind, their lintels carved with dates from the 1840s. If you're lucky, you'll spot griffon vultures riding the thermals above the ridge. If you're unlucky, you'll meet a wild boar—increasingly common as farming declines.

Eating for Altitude

Food here follows the climate: heavy, hot, designed to fuel bodies working outside in sub-zero temperatures. The local speciality is tiznao, a stew of salt cod, potatoes and paprika that tastes better than it sounds. Restaurants proper don't exist, but Pilar in the house opposite the church will cook for visitors if you book a day ahead. Her menu is whatever's to hand—perhaps migas (fried breadcrumbs with garlic and chorizo) followed by cordero al ajillo, lamb slow-cooked with thirty cloves of garlic. Expect to pay €25 including wine from Valdejalón that'll blow your head off.

Breakfast is simpler. The bar opens at seven for workers heading to the wind farms—coffee with condensed milk and torreznos, strips of pork belly fried until they shatter. It's 300 calories a mouthful and absolutely necessary if you're spending the day outside. Vegetarian options? Technically possible, about as authentic as a vegan black pudding.

Getting There, Getting Away

Pardos sits 150 kilometres north-east of Madrid, but psychologically it's further. From the UK, fly to Barajas, collect a hire car, and allow three hours including a coffee stop in Guadalajara. The final forty kilometres on the CM-2105 require concentration—single track with passing places, no barrier between you and a 400-metre drop. In winter, you'll need chains even with a 4x4. Sat-nav gives up entirely for the last ten kilometres; download offline maps before you leave the A-2.

Accommodation options are limited. The village has no hotel, but Casa Rural La Paramera offers three bedrooms in a restored farmhouse on the outskirts. It's comfortable enough—underfloor heating, proper showers, Wi-Fi that works when the wind's in the right direction—at €70 a night for two including breakfast. Alternatively, base yourself in Molina de Aragón twenty minutes away, where the three-star Hotel Monreal has doubles from €55 and restaurants that stay open past nine.

Stay longer than two days and you'll need to adjust expectations. This isn't a place for ticking off sights. It's for understanding how Spain's interior emptied, how people adapt to living on the roof of a continent, how forty souls can keep a village alive when logic says they should have left decades ago. Bring good boots, bring layers, bring a tolerance for silence. Leave the phrases book at home—here, conversation happens slowly, in Castilian Spanish thick as the local stew, and nobody's in a hurry to finish.