Junciana

The church bell tolls at noon, but only three people cross the granite cobbles below. One carries a feed bucket, another a rolled newspaper from Ávila that arrived yesterday. At 994 metres above sea level, sound travels cleanly in Junciana; the clang reaches the edge of the cereal fields before fading into the holm-oak scrub. This is the daily soundtrack of a village that has not so much resisted change as ignored it, and therein lies its pull for travellers who tire of curated Spain.

High-plateaux timekeeping

Junciana sits halfway between the granite crests of the Sierra de Ávila and the Corneja River, 28 km south-west of the provincial capital. The road in—CL-500 to the CU-110—winds through dehesas where Avileña cattle graze beneath encinas older than the Second Republic. In winter the route can ice over above the 900 m contour; locals keep chains in their 4×4 pickups and think nothing of a two-hour detour via Villatoro when the fog drops. Summer is kinder, though the asphalt softens in 35 °C heat and the only shade is the tunnel of poplars outside Malpartida de Corneja.

There is no bakery, no cash machine, no mobile shop. What the village does offer is altitude-cooled air that smells of thyme and cut hay, and a horizon that stretches northwards across the Duero basin. On crystalline January mornings you can pick out the Gredos cirque sixty kilometres away; by late July the view shimmers like the top of a cooker.

Stone, adobe, and stories that stick

The single street, Calle Real, is barely two hundred metres long. Houses rise directly from the roadway—granite blocks below, adobe brick above, roofed with curved terracotta tiles that were hauled up from the Ávila brickworks on mule wagons until the 1960s. Many façades still carry the iron ring where reins were hitched; a few have the original stone bench, the tinelo, where grandparents sat to shell kidney beans and gossip about Franco’s latest decree.

Number 14 is instructive. The wooden door is low—people were shorter when it was hung—and the lintel carries the date 1892 together with a mason’s mark that looks like an upside-down 4. Behind, a pajar raised on storks’ legs still stores wheat sheaves though no one has threshed here since 1987. The present owner, María Luisa, will show you the internal grain chute if you ask politely, but she will also tell you the roof leaks and the council wants steel scaffolding before anyone climbs the ladder. Conservation grants arrive slowly; the village has learned to live with drizzle dripping onto heirlooms.

Opposite, the parish church of San Pedro keeps its own counsel. The tower is 16th-century, squat rather than soaring, patched after lightning in 1934 and again after the 1975 earthquake that cracked the apse. Inside, a single-nave barrel vault carries the faint smell of paraffin and old wax. There is no great art—no alabaster tombs or gilded retablos—just a provincial San Pedro attributed to a follower of Berruguete and a 1940s plaster Virgin whose paint flakes a little more each year. Yet the building still anchors the village: when the priest drives over from Piedrahíta on alternate Sundays, the bell rings fifteen minutes early and the same eight inhabitants occupy the same pews their grandparents warmed.

Walking without waymarks

Junciana’s best museum is its circumference. Footpaths radiate like spokes, unmarked except for the ruts of farmers’ tractors. A favourite loop heads south-east along the Cañada Real Soriana, an ancient drove road once wide enough for a thousand merino sheep. After 4 km the track dips into the Corneja gorge where otter prints sometimes appear on the sandbanks; you return via the ridge past abandoned chozos, circular stone huts that housed shepherds until the 1970s. Total distance: 9 km. Total ascent: 220 m. Likely human encounters: zero.

Spring brings the biggest reward. In late April the cereal terraces colour emerald, poppies splatter the field edges, and the air fills with the song of skylarks and the rattle of corn buntings. Bring binoculars and you can add booted eagle, black-shouldered kite, and—if you are lucky—resident Spanish imperial eagle drifting overhead. After midsummer the palette turns to parchment; by October the stubble is dotted with nispero-coloured bales and the first cranes glide south, bugling in the dusk.

Winter walking is possible but demanding. Daytime highs hover around 6 °C, the wind cuts from the north-west, and paths become greasy clay that sticks to boots like wet cement. Still, the clarity is unbeatable: you hear a dog bark in Piedrahíta ten kilometres off, and every stone wall stands out in sharp relief. If snow arrives—rare but not unheard-of—the village briefly becomes a photocopy of the Pyrenees, minus the ski crowds.

Calories and conversations

There is no pub, café, or grocery. The last village shop closed in 2003 when Doña Cándida retired; its iron shutters are now rusted into a permanent half-mast position. Self-catering is mandatory. Stock up in Ávila’s Mercadona before you leave, or phone ahead to the bakery in Barco de Ávila (open 07:00–14:00, closed Monday) and ask them to set aside a barra—they will, even if they do not know your name.

What you can buy is proximity to people who remember food before refrigeration. Knock on the white gate opposite the church and Julián will sell you a kilo of patatas moradas, purple-fleshed potatoes he plants by hand on a terrace too steep for his tractor. The price is whatever the co-op in Villacastín quotes that week, paid in cash and dropped into an old biscuit tin. On feast days his wife, Ángeles, still slaughters a pig in the traditional manner; if you pass by while the matanza is under way you will be offered a slice of morcilla fresh from the copper pot, seasoned with onion and locally foraged oregano. Refusing is bad form.

For a sit-down meal you must drive 12 km to Barco. Try La Casona de Barco (Calle del Medio 9; menú del día €14, weekends €18) where the judiones—giant butter beans grown in the Corneja valley—arrive stewed with pig’s cheek and a splash of pimentón de la Vera. Order the house red, a young tempranillo from Cebreros, and you will understand why locals treat the 45-minute run to the A-55 as a commute rather than an expedition.

August interlude, winter silence

Every year on the weekend nearest 15 August the population quadruples. Former residents—now plumbers in Madrid, care workers in Bilbao—return with children who have only seen the village on WhatsApp. A sound system appears in the square, someone wires coloured bulbs into the plane tree, and the peña of ex-pupils of the long-closed school organises a paella for two hundred. For thirty-six hours Junciana feels almost cosmopolitan: beer flows, reggaeton rattles off granite walls, teenagers compare trainers under the church porch. Then Sunday night arrives, cars are packed, and by Tuesday morning the bell again tolls for an audience of three.

Winter strips the place back to essence. Daylight is curtailed at 17:30, the temperature inside stone houses can match that outside, and television satellites glow like orange eyes in the dusk. Yet this is when you glimpse the village’s real achievement: it has not become a theme park. Roofs still leak, tractors still break, and the mayor—elected with thirty-one votes—still argues with the regional council about fibre-optic cable. Tourism, such as it is, remains incidental. Walk the lanes at twilight, nod to the old man burning prunings in a 44-gallon drum, and you are participating in continuity rather than consumption.

Before you set off

Getting there: no public transport serves the village. From Madrid take the A-6 to Ávila, then the N-502 towards Barco-Piedrahíta; turn left at the CU-110 signposted Navalacruz and follow for 9 km. The last 3 km are single-track with passing bays—drive slowly, cattle have right of way.

Where to stay: Junciana has no hotel, but five village houses are rented informally. Expect €70–€90 a night for a two-bedroom cottage with wood burner and basic kitchen. Search “casas rurales Junciana Barco Ávila” and email owners directly—response within 24 hours is normal, 48 at weekends.

When to come: late April–mid-June for flowers and migrant birds; mid-September–October for harvest colour and crane migration. July–August is hot and dry but animated by the fiesta. November–March can be glorious or grim—check the five-day forecast and pack layers.

Leave the tick-list at home. Junciana will not deliver souvenir fridge magnets or sunset selfies to make colleagues envious. It offers instead a calibration point: a place where the Meseta keeps its own slow time, and visitors are measured by how quietly they can match it.