Tordellego

The church tower appears first, a stone beacon rising from brown hills at 1,246 metres above sea level. Then the village itself: low houses the colour of earth, roofs patched with terracotta tiles that have weathered centuries of wind. Tordellego squats on its ridge like something grown rather than built, forty minutes' drive north of Molina de Aragón along roads that twist through empty valleys where griffon vultures turn lazy circles overhead.

This is Spain's alta meseta, the high plateau where Castilla-La Mancha bleeds into Aragón. At this altitude, the air carries a sharpness missing from the coast three hours away. Summer days hit 35°C but nights drop to 15°C. Winter brings proper cold: temperatures plunge below freezing from November to March, and snow can isolate the village for days. The wind never stops. It whistles through telephone wires and rattles loose shutters, carrying the scent of thyme and distant sheep.

Stone and Silence

Fifty people live here year-round. Maybe sixty. The exact number shifts with births, deaths, and the slow drift towards cities that has hollowed out rural Spain since the 1960s. What remains is architecture without pretence: granite houses built thick-walled against winter, their wooden doors painted Mediterranean blues and greens that fade to soft greys. Adobe outbuildings slump against stone walls. Empty pigsties stand roofless, their beams exposed like ribcages.

Walk the single main street at midday in July and you'll meet nobody. The silence feels physical, broken only by your footsteps echoing off stone and the electronic chirp of a caged finch somewhere behind a shuttered window. Elderly women emerge at dusk, moving between houses with the unhurried pace of people who have nowhere particular to be. They'll nod acknowledgement but rarely speak; tourists are neither welcomed nor resented, simply noted and forgotten.

The fifteenth-century church of San Pedro Apóstol anchors the village. Its tower, rebuilt after lightning struck in 1847, serves as landmark and timekeeper. Bells mark the hours with mechanical precision, though nobody hurries to answer their call. Inside, the nave feels chill even in August. Paint peels from baroque altarpieces. A side chapel holds a Christ figure whose wooden feet have been worn smooth by centuries of kisses and desperate touches.

Walking the Wastelands

Tordellego offers no signed trails, no visitor centre, no gift shop selling fridge magnets. What it has is space. Tracks radiate outward across rolling uplands where wheat and barley grow patchily on thin soils. Walk east and you'll reach the abandoned hamlet of Loscertales in forty minutes, its stone houses slowly dissolving back into farmland. Head south across the Arroyo de Tordellego and climb towards the Sierra de Solorio, where Spanish ibex watch from limestone outcrops.

The landscape lacks drama but rewards patience. April brings purple flashes of viper's bugloss among the wheat stubble. Autumn paints the sparse oak woods copper and gold. Throughout the year, booted eagles hunt overhead while nightjars churr at dusk. The night sky delivers properly dark darkness: Orion burns sharp enough to cast shadows, the Milky Way spills across the heavens in a way that city dwellers forget exists.

Bring water. Bring food. Bring a map, because Google Maps shows tracks that haven't existed since the Civil War. Mobile reception dies two kilometres from the village in most directions. In summer, start early or wait until evening; midday heat at this altitude feels murderous despite the elevation. Winter walkers need proper boots and layers: the wind carries ice even when the sun shines.

Food and Other Practicalities

Nobody sells coffee here. Nobody sells anything, actually. The last shop closed in 1998. The bar followed five years later. Bring supplies from Molina de Aragón or calculate carefully: the nearest supermarket sits twenty-five kilometres away in Arcos de Jalón, though the bakery there closes without warning whenever the owner feels like it.

Food traditions persist in private kitchens. Matanza season runs January through March, when families slaughter pigs they've raised since spring. The entire pig becomes food: morcilla blood sausage spiced with local oregano, chorizos air-dried in stone sheds, fat rendered into manteca for winter cooking. If you're invited to participate, accept. The work starts before dawn and ends with a feast of fresh chorizo fried in its own fat, served with rough bread and wine that costs €2 a bottle but tastes like something ancient and important.

August brings the fiesta patronal, when emigrants return with city accents and cars washed specially for the occasion. The population swells to perhaps two hundred. There's a mass, obviously, followed by paella cooked in pans three metres wide. Teenagers who've never lived here flirt awkwardly in Plaza Mayor. Grandparents gossip about crops and funerals. By Sunday night everyone has gone, leaving Tordellego to its wind and its silence.

Getting There, Getting Away

From Madrid, take the A-2 towards Zaragoza then swing north on the CM-210 towards Molina. The turn-off appears suddenly after forty kilometres of empty road: a small sign pointing towards Tordellego, altitude 1246m. The final twelve kilometres climb through pine plantations where wild boar root among fallen needles. In winter, carry snow chains. The road gets ploughed eventually, but eventually might mean tomorrow or next week.

No buses come here. No trains have ever come here. Hitchhiking works, technically, though you might wait hours for a car to appear. The nearest accommodation sits in Molina de Aragón: the Hotel Monreal offers clean rooms for €45 a night and serves dinner until 10pm, late by village standards but convenient if you've been driving.

Stay or don't stay. Tordellego offers nothing except itself, unchanged and unchangeable, a place where modern Spain feels like something happening elsewhere. The villagers wouldn't have it any other way.