Paracuellos

The first thing that hits you is the drop in temperature. After an hour's drive south-east from Cuenca, the car thermometer falls five degrees as the road climbs into the Serranía Baja. At 980 metres above sea level, Paracuellos sits high enough for the air to feel thin, sharp, almost Alpine. The village appears suddenly – a cluster of stone roofs clinging to a fold in the hills, with the land falling away on three sides into pine-dark valleys.

This isn't the Castilla-La Mancha of windmills and flat wheat plains. The province's southern edge fractures here into a maze of rounded summits and narrow tracks where wild boar outnumber people. Paracuellos itself counts barely ninety permanent residents. Many houses stay shuttered until August, when former locals return from Madrid or Valencia to reopen family homes for the fiestas. The rest of the year, silence dominates. A tractor might grind past at dawn. Dogs bark. Otherwise, the loudest sound is wind moving through Aleppo pines.

Stone, Slope and Survival

The village layout makes no concessions to level ground. Streets follow the contour of the slope, narrowing into stepped alleyways that dead-end at someone's stable door. Traditional houses are built from local limestone, their walls two feet thick to buffer winter cold. Roofs pitch steeply – a legacy of heavy snow that can cut the village off for days between December and February. Summer visitors sometimes miss this harder edge. They arrive in June, find the stone warm to the touch, and wonder why every ground-floor window has iron bars. The answer is simple: when snow drifts reach the sills, those bars keep livestock from wandering into the kitchen.

Walking boots matter here. The centre is pedestrian-only, but 'pedestrian' includes the farmer who drives his van down Calle Real at 7 a.m. to load sheep. Cobbles are uneven; rain gutters run straight down the middle of lanes. Heels skid. Flip-flops are hopeless. A sensible pair of approach shoes lets you explore the network of footpaths that radiate from the upper cemetery. These aren't way-marked national trails – just tracks used by shepherds, marked by cairns and the occasional splash of red paint left by the local hiking club.

Maps Optional, Compass Useful

The most straightforward circuit heads south along the ridge towards the abandoned hamlet of Los Alagones. The path contours for 45 minutes through holm-oak scrub, then drops into a shallow valley where stone terraces once grew wheat. Return via the forest track that climbs back to Paracuellos from the west – a round walk of two hours, just enough to work up an appetite for lunch. Spring brings wild asparagus along the verges; autumn offers saffron milk caps if you know where to look. Both are claimed quickly by villagers who still rely on foraged extras to flavour the pot.

Serious walkers can string together a longer day by linking the PR-CU-51 footpath to the neighbouring village of Carboneras de Guadazaón, 12 kilometres away. The route crosses the Cabriel valley, gaining and losing 400 metres of height twice. In July you need to start before eight to finish before the heat becomes punishing. Even at altitude, midday temperatures top 32 °C, and shade is patchy. Carry more water than you think necessary – the only fuente en route is a trickle marked 'no potable' that tastes strongly of iron.

What Passes for a Menu

Food options inside Paracuellos itself are limited to one bar, open Thursday to Sunday, and the occasional casa rural that serves dinner to residents. Expect robust mountain cooking: gazpacho manchego (a thick game stew, nothing like the cold Andalusian soup), morteruelo pork pâté spiced with clove, and potatoes roasted with rosemary sprigs the size of sausages. Prices hover around €12 for a main; portions assume you've walked ten kilometres. Vegetarians get eggs – usually revuelto de setas, scrambled with wild mushrooms if the season allows.

For self-catering, stock up before you leave Cuenca. The village shop closed five years ago when the owner retired. A mobile grocer in a white van visits Tuesday and Friday at 11 a.m., honking his horn. Locals troop down with woven baskets; visitors wander out in bewilderment, still in slippers. If you miss him, the nearest supermarket is 25 minutes' drive in Priego – a round trip that feels epic when the mountain road is coated with January ice.

When the Sky Clears

Night-time rewards the effort of getting here. Light pollution is negligible; the Milky Way appears as a definite smudge even when the moon is half-full. August brings Perseid meteors streaking above the silhouette of the 1,400-metre Cerro de San Pedro. Bring a jacket – temperatures can dip to 10 °C after midnight, even in midsummer. Photographers set up on the disused threshing floor east of the church; the stone circle gives 270 degrees of horizon and a foreground that looks medieval enough for any desktop wallpaper.

Winter has a different beauty, but access becomes gamble. The CM-2108 from the A-3 is first to close when snow arrives. Chains are compulsory, yet few car-hire firms at Madrid airport provide them. If you do reach the village, the reward is silence so complete you hear your own pulse. Roofs wear a white mantle for days; smoke rises vertically from chimneys. The bar stays shuttered – owners live down in the valley – so self-sufficiency is total. Pack tinned food, a full gas bottle and a thermos of caldo that lasts the afternoon.

Honest Verdict

Paracuellos will never feature on a coach-tour circuit. There are no souvenir shops, no interpretive centre, no Instagram-friendly pastel façades. What it offers instead is altitude, space and a ringside seat on rural Spain as it actually functions. Come prepared: bring cash, walking boots, a sense of direction and enough Spanish to ask whether the path you're on belongs to someone else's goats. Manage that, and the village repays you with clear air, dark nights and the slow realisation that 980 metres is high enough to rise above quite a lot of modern noise. Miss the preparations, and you'll simply be cold, hungry and stuck on a closed road – which, come to think of it, is probably the most authentic local experience of all.