Deza

The church bell strikes noon and nobody stirs. A tractor idles outside the only bar, its driver inside nursing a caña and watching the door as if expecting someone who never arrives. This is Deza at midday in early May: 880 metres above sea level, 160 souls on the register, and silence so complete you can hear wheat growing.

Soria province has been leaking population since the 1950s, but Deza clings on. Stone houses the colour of burnt cream line lanes that slope gently to a small square where the parish church keeps watch. Nothing here was built for show. Even the church tower, the tallest thing for kilometres, looks apologetic against the vast Castilian sky.

The Arithmetic of Emptiness

Walk five minutes in any direction and the village ends. Suddenly you're in a geography lesson: wheat stubble stretching to a horizon so straight it might have been drawn with a ruler. These are the parameras, high plains where sheep outnumber people and the wind arrives already angry from the Moncayo massif thirty kilometres away. Bring a jacket even in July; the cierzo wind can drop the temperature ten degrees before you've finished your sandwich.

The surrounding fields follow a calendar city dwellers have forgotten. April brings luminous green shoots, by late June the wheat turns gold, August smells of straw and diesel as the combines roll through. After harvest the land rests, bare soil striped with stubble, waiting for autumn rain that may or may not come. It's farming as it was in 1950, just with bigger machinery and fewer hands.

Stone, Slate and the Occasional Eagle

Deza's architectural vocabulary is limited but honest. Granite quarried from nearby El Valle, slate roofs quarried nowhere (they were brought by donkey from Galicia in the 1920s), wooden doors that close with a thud satisfying enough to wake the neighbour's dog. Some houses still carry heraldic stones carved when certain families mattered more than others; the sandstone has worn smooth, the lions and castles now resemble abstract art.

The church of San Pedro mixes its metaphors cheerfully: Romanesque base, Gothic arch here, Baroque altar there. Step inside and the temperature drops five degrees. Your eyes adjust to reveal a sixteenth-century carving of a rather glum Virgin, her paint flaking like sunburnt skin. There's no ticket office, no audio guide, just a printed notice asking visitors to close the door gently because "the wind makes mischief".

upwards, following a track that smells of wild thyme and diesel. Within twenty minutes Deza shrinks to a smudge of roofs. Keep climbing and you'll reach the ridge where griffon vultures ride thermals, their wings catching afternoon light like polished bronze. Binoculars help, but patience helps more; eagles appear on their schedule, not yours.

What Passes for Excitement

Evening entertainment begins at Bar Deza, the only game in town. Cristina pulls beers while keeping one eye on her toddler who's commandeered the pool table. Order a corto (a proper Spanish small beer, not those thimbles they serve in Madrid) and you'll get a free tapa of local chorizo, paprika-heavy and chewy enough to exercise the jaw. The television mutters football results nobody watches. Conversation, when it happens, concerns rainfall, wheat prices, and whose cousin has finally found work in Zaragoza.

Food options are limited but honest. The bar serves migas—fried breadcrumbs with grapes and bacon—on Sundays, and a decent tortilla every day. For anything fancier you'll need wheels. Drive twelve kilometres to Ágreda where Casa Agapito grills lamb chops over vine shoots until the fat crackles, or try the roadside venta at Calatañazor where the menu hasn't changed since 1987 and the waiters still wear white jackets.

When to Bother, and When Not To

Come in late April when the fields glow electric green and nightingales sing from every bush. Or choose mid-October for the sheep fairs at nearby villages, when farmers gather to argue over prices and drink anis until they can't remember them. Avoid August if possible; the village fills with returning grandchildren and cars playing reggaeton at dentist-drill volume. Winter brings its own bleak beauty—frost silvering the stubble, skies the colour of pewter—but snow can block the road for days and the heating in most houses struggles past eighteen degrees.

Getting here requires commitment. The nearest railway station is in Soria, 55 kilometres away, served by two trains daily from Madrid that arrive at inconvenient times. Car hire is essential; the last bus left Deza in 1998 and never returned. From the A-15 motorway it's a twenty-minute drive through landscapes that make the Yorkshire Dales look overcrowded. Petrol stations are scarce—fill up in Ólvega and don't trust the gauge.

Stay at Casa Chaparrete, the only guesthouse, where English isn't spoken but kindness is universal. Rooms cost €45 and smell of woodsmoke and lavender. Breakfast brings thick coffee, home-made jam, and bread toasted on the open fire. The owner, Pilar, will lend you a key to the church and directions to the vulture viewpoint, delivered with the warning that "the wind up there tells lies—take another jumper".

The Unvarnished Truth

Deza won't change your life. There are no souvenir shops, no Michelin stars, no Instagram moments unless you're the sort who finds beauty in rusted ploughshares. What you get instead is Spain stripped of flamenco and fiestas, a place where the elderly still bless passing strangers and time moves to the rhythm of sowing and harvest. Visit once and you'll probably leave early, puzzled by the silence. Visit twice and you might start measuring your own life against the patient endurance of these fields and their people.