Fuensalida

The clock on the 15th-century tower strikes two, and Fuensalida simply turns itself off. Shop grilles slam, the last coffee cup clatters, even the dogs stretch and settle in the shade. For three and a half hours the only movement is the stork on the palace roof, rearranging her wings like someone trying to get comfy on a budget airline. Siesta here is not a quaint custom; it is a civic lockdown, and first-time visitors who haven’t factored it in end up circling the empty Plaza España with a bag of warm croissants wondering if the Rapture happened while they were parking.

They didn’t miss anything. They arrived in a town that still behaves as if Franco’s timetable never ended and mobile phones never began. Fuensalida squats 600 m above sea-level on a ridge of russet clay 30 km west of Toledo, close enough for a day-trip but far enough that tour coaches give it a miss. The result is a working Manchego town of 5,000 souls where English is spoken in one place only – the pharmacy on Calle Real, where the owner learnt it watching Casualty – and where you can still get a three-course lunch with wine for €11 if you sit down before the shutters close.

Brick and ochre are the local colours. There is no village-green prettiness, no geranium-filled pots; instead the houses rise straight from the pavement in blunt cubes, their timber doors once painted ox-blood now sun-bleached to terracotta. It looks severe until the sun drops and the walls glow like embers, a slow-burn light that photographers from Madrid drive out to catch, tripods lined along the old railway cutting like bird-watchers.

What the Palace Can’t Tell You

The Palacio de los Condes de Fuensalida keeps its mouth shut. A sixteenth-century stone box with a crenellated tower, it is still privately owned – rumours say by a branch of the family that once bankrolled Isabella of Castile – and visitors are limited to the outside. Lean over the railings and you can see the original coat of arms worn smooth by wind, the carving of a pomegranate so eroded it looks more like a bruised cricket ball. Peer through the keyhole instead and you’ll glimpse a gravel courtyard where a single cypress throws a shadow sharp enough to cut bread. Townspeople cross themselves when they pass the main gate; not from piety, but because the Counts were famed for hanging prisoners from that same cypress. Local memory is long and unforgiving.

Opposite, the parish church of San Juan Bautista keeps its doors mercifully open. Inside, the Gothic vaults smell of incense and floor wax; a gilded altarpiece glints like a boxer’s grin. Ask the sacristan – a man who appears from nowhere the moment you drop a coin in the box – and he’ll crank open the choir gate so you can see the 1525 lectern carved with mermaids whose tails morph into acanthus leaves. The mermaids have breasts and knowing smiles; the priest who commissioned them was later hauled before the Inquisition. No one seems surprised.

Ceramics and Carcamusas

The kilns that once fired Fuensalida’s green-glazed pottery are gone, the last chimney demolished in 1978 to widen the road to Toledo. Yet clay still rules. Walk into Bar La Reja at 11 a.m. and you’ll find men drinking anise from bowls they throw themselves at the adult-education workshop behind the health centre. Ask nicely and the barman will drag out a cardboard box of rejects – mugs with uneven lips, plates warped into slight smiles – and sell you one for €3. The glaze is rough, the base un-signed; it will leak for a week and then settle into the most reliable breakfast bowl you’ve ever owned.

Food arrives without fanfare. Carcamusas, Toledo’s signature pork-and-pea stew, is thick enough to hold a spoon upright; the local version adds a pinch of hot paprika that stains the chin like lipstick. A half-ration costs €4.50 and comes with a basket of bread that started life at 5 a.m. in the bakery on Plaza del Carmen. Order perdiz estofada in season and you get an entire partridge, its legs splayed like a crash victim, soaking in onion liquor. Vegetarians survive on manchego cheese aged 12 months – nutty, milder than the supermarket wedges shipped to London – and on pisto manchego, aubergines and peppers reduced to a smoky jam. Pudding is tarta de Toledo, marzipan sliced from a log the size of a bolster; it tastes of almonds and medieval nunneries and goes alarmingly well with a glass of chilled Cencibel rosé.

Outside the Walls

The town ends abruptly. One minute you’re passing blocks of flats with satellite dishes, the next you’re among wheat and vines, the earth the colour of Cheddar gorge. A tarmac track heads south for 7 km to the abandoned Ermita de San Sebastián, its bell tower open to storks and wind. Cyclists use the route at dawn when the plateau is still cool and the only sound is the squeak of tyres on melted tar. Walkers prefer the old cañada real sheep-drive that cuts west towards Torrijos; stone way-markers every kilometre give distances in leagues and quote Cervantes, who passed through in 1605 and complained about the price of wine.

Spring brings colour – crimson poppies, white asphodelus, larks dive-bombing the path – but also the levante wind, hot and gritty as cat litter. Autumn is calmer, the stubble fields burned gold, the vines turning traffic-light red. Summer is for insomniacs: daytime highs of 39 °C send everyone indoors, while at night the square fills with families carrying fold-up chairs, babies still awake at 1 a.m. licking ice-lollies shaped like Spiderman. Winter can bite; at 600 m the plateau collects frost and the palace tower wears a wig of snow. Come February the fiesta de la Candelaria lights the streets with bonfires and the smell of chorizo sizzling on borrowed garden forks.

Saturday Night and Other Hazards

If you stay the weekend, ask for a room at the back. Saturday night is botellón night: teenagers drive in from surrounding villages, park pickups nose-to-tail, and unload litre bottles of calimocho – red wine and cola, the Spanish alcopop – while bands set up on a makeshift stage. The music stops at 3 a.m. sharp, thanks to a mayor who believes in compromise, but until then the bass rattles windowpanes like an approaching storm. Sunday morning belongs to brooms and sore heads; the only place open is the bakery, where churros emerge in loops the size of bicycle tyres.

Monday is closure day. The church, the interpretation centre, even the cash machine take a collective breeze. Plan accordingly or you’ll find yourself photographing storks for three hours, which is relaxing the first time, less so the fourth.

Cash remains sovereign. Many bars still run tabs on paper napkins; some card machines sit unplugged on the shelf “until summer”. The underground car park beneath the health centre charges €1 for the whole day – feed the machine coins, not notes, or it sulks. Street parking on Avenida de Castilla is free and safe, though avoid the plane trees in autumn; the fruit stains paintwork the colour of dried blood.

The Practical Bit, Woven In

Toledo, with its cathedral and queues round the block, is 28 minutes west on the CM-42 if you leave after 9 a.m. Before that the commuter traffic crawls. From Madrid the A-40 drops you at the Fuensalida turn-off in 65 minutes; there is no train, and the bus runs twice daily except Sundays when it doesn’t run at all. Beds are limited: four small guesthouses, two under the same roof as the owners’ flats, all with thin walls and excellent Wi-Fi. Expect to pay €45–€60 for a double, breakfast extra if you want it; most Spaniards stroll to the bakery for a €1.20 café con leche and a napolitana of chocolate instead.

Worth It?

Fuensalida offers no postcard views, no gift-shop magnets, no audio guides in Received Pronunciation. What it does offer is the real, slightly scuffed Castile: a town where history is lived in rather than cordoned off, where lunch is still the day’s main event, and where you can stand in a silent street at dusk and hear the creak of the stork’s wings as she settles in for the night. Come for the palace you cannot enter, stay for the bowl you will never throw away; leave before the fiesta speakers go up if silence is your thing, or stay and dance badly with strangers until the mayor pulls the plug. Either way, Toledo will still be there tomorrow, queues and all, while Fuensalida slips back into its weekday rhythm of bread, clay and quiet.