Villanázar

The church bell strikes seven and the village switches on. Not with neon or traffic, but with wooden shutters clacking open, a dog barking at nothing, and the smell of coffee drifting across stone roofs that have baked all night in the high-plateau heat. Villanázar, 700 m above sea level on the Zamoran meseta, keeps time the old way: one bell for the field-workers, another for the priest, and a longer, lazier peal on Sundays that brings the population back to just over 250.

Stone, adobe and the slow creep of thyme

Most houses are built from what the plateau offers—granite at the base, sun-dried adobe above, roofs pitched just enough to slide the winter snow onto the street. Iron balconies sag under geraniums that never quite die; ground-level doors are tall enough for a hay cart and still scarred by decades of wooden axles. There is no “old quarter” cordoned off for visitors, simply the village, lived-in and peeling, where the mayor’s cousin might be whitewashing his wall while the neighbour’s chickens wander across the road.

Walking takes twenty minutes if you dawdle. Start at the single traffic island, pass the bread van that arrives Tuesdays and Fridays, and you reach the parish church of San Miguel. Its tower is visible from every approach road—useful in a landscape so flat that a two-storey building doubles as a landmark. Inside, the air smells of candle wax and damp stone; retablos from the 1700s have lost most of their gold leaf but kept their biblical scowl. Drop a euro in the box and the sacristan will switch on the lights long enough to notice that the carved choir stalls still bear sword cuts from the 1806 French foraging party that slept here.

Outside, the plaza is an irregular triangle shaded by three plane trees and a mobile-phone mast disguised as a fourth. Elderly men play cards on a stone bench whose bronze plaque lists the 1931 municipal budget—an accidental reminder that civic pride once meant publishing the accounts in stone. No café terrace faces the square. Instead, the social centre is the Cooperative cellar at the far end of Calle Real. Between 11.00 and 13.00 you can buy bulk wine drawn from a stainless-steel vat: bring your own bottle, 1.20 € a litre, Rioja tinta cut with the local garnacha. The woman at the hatch stamps your fidelity card; ten refills earn a free plastic funnel.

Fields the size of small counties

Maize and barley roll away in rectangles that meet the horizon at a ruler-edge. Track roads, wide enough for a combine harvester, link Villanázar to three even smaller hamlets; the OS map names them but the bus timetable doesn’t. Walk south-east for forty minutes and you reach the Arroyo de Valdefuentes, a dribble of water in summer, a proper torrent after the April showers. The bank is lined with ash and willow—rare vertical punctuation in a landscape devoted to horizontal. Golden orioles nest here; bring binoculars in May and you might add hoopoe and black-shouldered kite to your list. The village tourist office (open Wednesday mornings in the town hall foyer) sells a photocopied leaflet with a 7 km loop, but the farmer who owns the third gate often padlocks it during sowing season—no malice, just practicality.

Cyclists find the going easier: the county road ZA-1806 has a sealed shoulder and almost no lorries. Eastwards the tarmac climbs gently for 12 km to the ridge above Benavente; turn back at the wind turbines and the return glide gives effortless 40 km/h speeds. Carry water—bars are spaced one per valley, and the owner may have popped home for lunch.

What arrives on the back of a pick-up

Gastronomy in Villanázar is still a domestic affair. The weekly produce van—white Mercedes, loudspeaker playing the same 1989 Euro-hit—sells tomatoes from León, peppers from Murcia and, in October, pimentón de la Vera at 4 € a kilo. For anything more elaborate you need an invitation, or at least the right surname at the fiesta. The main celebration honouring the Virgen de la Soledad shifts between the last weekend of July and the first of August depending on the priest’s calendar. Visitors are welcome, though tables in the marquee are allocated by family clan. Bring a bottle of orujo and you’ll be adopted quickly; refuse the offering of cocido maragato (chickpea stew served backwards—meat first, soup last) and you won’t.

If you prefer anonymity, the only commercial option is Bar Cristina on Calle San Roque. It opens at 07.00 for the farm workers and stays open as long as the owner’s television keeps working. Order the plato combinado and you receive fried eggs, chips, a slab of jamón and a judías blancas side dish—enough calories for a morning behind a plough. A coffee afterwards costs 90 céntimos; ask for it “con leche de sobre” and you’ll get the UHT sachet thrown in, rural shorthand for “we don’t run to froth”.

Winter silence, summer static

From November to March the village belongs to the retired. Thermometers drop to –8 °C at night; pipes freeze, snow settles for a day or two and the fields turn the colour of unfinished bread. The Cooperative wine develops a harmless tartrate crust, and conversations move from benches to kitchens heated by butano stoves. Roads stay open—gritters from Benavente arrive within two hours—but the single daily bus is cancelled if the driver decides the black ice is too risky. Book a room with central heating; stone walls two feet thick keep summer heat out and winter cold in.

Come June the temperature curve flips. By 15.00 the mercury kisses 34 °C and even the swallows fly at ankle height to keep cool. That is when the emigrants return: mechanics from Madrid, care-workers from Valladolid, one aerospace engineer from Bristol who bought his grandparents’ house back from a cousin. The population triples, portable swimming pools appear in back gardens, and the village WhatsApp group buzzes with complaints about noise after midnight. Book accommodation early—there are only six rental properties, all clustered around the old bread oven. Expect to pay 45 € for a double, 65 € if you want air-conditioning that actually works.

Getting here, getting out

Villanázar sits 54 km south-east of Zamora city and 28 km north-west of Benavente, technically on the N-630 but the old national road has been downgraded to a sleepy carriageway since the A-6 motorway sucked the lorries away. From the UK the simplest rail route is Eurostar to Paris, TGV to Barcelona, overnight sleeper to Zamora, then the regional bus that leaves at 13.15 and drops you at the village fountain at 14.30. Total journey time from London St Pancras is twenty-one hours, including a croissant and two coffees you’ll remember more fondly than the airport alternative: Stansted to Valladolid with Ryanair, two-hour layover, hire-car for the final 90 minutes across the meseta.

Petrolheads should note the last 5 km have no street lighting; sat-navs panic at the straightness and plead for a turning that does not exist. Fill the tank in Benavente—Villanázar’s single pump closed in 2019 when the owner retired and no one fancied the paperwork.

Leave the postcard blank

Villanázar will not change your life, unless you crave a place where the loudest evening sound is a stone scraping against a metal gate as someone shuts the chickens in. Photographs come out muted: beige stone, beige earth, sky either relentlessly blue or uniformly grey. Yet the village stays with you in the way a half-remembered tune does—simple, repetitive, oddly reassuring. Return if you need reminding that time can still be measured in bell rings, wine vintages and the slow creep of thyme between paving stones. If that sounds too quiet, the motorway back to the airport is only fifteen minutes away, and it doesn’t toll until you hit the Portuguese border.