Donvidas

The church bell strikes noon, yet nobody appears. A single magpie lands on the stone cross above the porch, then flaps away across wheat stubble that stretches to a horizon so straight it might have been drawn with a ruler. Donvidas, population thirty at the last official count, doesn’t bustle. It exhales.

At 868 m, the hamlet sits high enough for the air to feel rinsed. In early May the night temperature can still dip to 6°C, so walkers arriving from Madrid’s 30-degree afternoon often reach for a fleece within minutes. The altitude also explains the sky: a vast, scrubbed dome that makes the clustered stone houses seem even smaller than they are. You can walk from one end of the settlement to the other in four minutes, five if you stop to read the 1950s metal sign bolted to the schoolhouse—“Escuela Nacional”—now a private residence whose owner keeps the original lettering out of respect, or perhaps indifference.

The Plain Truth

Donvidas belongs to La Moraña, a cereal plateau that once fed Segovia’s court and still supplies half of Ávila province’s bread wheat. The surrounding fields rotate barley, chickpeas and sunflowers; their colours switch from electric green in April to burnt gold by July, then to the brown of ploughed earth through winter. There is no dramatic sierra backdrop, no river gorge—just an ocean of soil and sky. The landscape’s restraint is its virtue: after the visual clutter of coastal Spain, the emptiness feels almost radical.

Few visitors stay overnight. The last guest accommodation closed when its owner, Doña Feli, died in 2018 at ninety-four. The nearest hotel is 18 km away in Arévalo, a market town known for its Segovian-style roast suckling pig (€24 a quarter at Asador de la Villa). Most travellers treat Donvidas as a 45-minute pause on a driving loop that links Arévalo, the walled city of Ávila, and the Royal Palace of La Granja. They park beside the cricket ground—an uneven rectangle of mown weeds with a wooden pavilion that leans like a tipsy pensioner—snap photos of the church tower, and leave.

Stay longer and the place begins to assert itself. Swallows trace the same flight path above the rooftops each evening, timing their return so precisely that you could set a watch by them. The village’s only public bench faces west; sit there at 8 p.m. in midsummer and you’ll see the sun drop into the barley like a coin sliding into a slot. Someone, probably retired teacher Don Saturio, will nod hello even if you’ve never met. By the second pass he’ll ask where you’re from, not out of nosiness but because conversation is a civic duty when the census fits on two sides of A4.

What Passes for Action

There is no bar, no shop, no ATM. The bakery van honks its horn at 10 a.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays; locals emerge with cloth bags and exact change. Bread costs €1.10, but if you hand over a twenty the driver may sigh—floats are reserved for pension day. Water comes from two public fountains; the one beside the church runs potable, the other feeds an animal trough and tastes of iron. A hand-painted sign warns “No beber” in red gloss that has dripped like blood down the stone.

Walkers can follow the farm track north-west towards El Carrascal, an abandoned hamlet whose stone walls now serve as winter shelters for shepherds. The path is wide enough for a combine harvester, flat enough for a pushchair, and marked only by the occasional mojón, a granite post engraved with the provincial crest. After 4 km the tarmac ends; continue another 2 km and you’ll reach a derelict grain store where swifts nest in the rafters. Retrace your steps or call a taxi from Arévalo (€18 fixed fare, mobile signal permitting).

Cyclists favour the loop south to El Barco de Ávila, 26 km of barely perceptible descent followed by a thigh-burning return. Carry two bidons: the only reliable refill is a petrol station just outside El Barco where the attendant keeps a cold tap behind the counter for lorry drivers. Summer midday temperatures top 34°C; the tarmac softens and sticks to tyres.

Calendar of the Almost Absent

Festivity is brief. On 15 August the village holds its fiesta menor: a mass at 11 a.m., a communal paella for whoever turns up, and a portable disco that packs up at midnight because the generator hire costs €80 an hour. Former residents return from Madrid or Valladolid, swell the population to roughly 120, then vanish again. Fireworks were cancelled after 2019 when the single rocket misfired and set fire to the wheat field opposite the church; the parish council voted to spend the budget on repainting the bell tower instead.

The larger celebration, Romería de San Isidro, takes place in May but has migrated to Arévalo’s fairground for convenience. Locals still bless the fields, though: at dawn on the 15th the priest drives the village’s only tractor—an olive-green Massey Ferguson from 1978—along the boundary road, sprinkling holy water from a plastic garden sprayer. Tourists rarely attend; the event is advertised only by a sheet of paper Sellotaped to the church door, written in biro and corrected for spelling.

The Practical Silence

Getting here requires wheels. There is no railway; the closest station is Arévalo on the Madrid–Salamanca line (1 hr 20 min from Chamartín, €17 each way). From Arévalo, Monday-to-Friday bus 412 leaves at 13:05 and returns at 16:30, a timetable designed for doctors’ appointments rather than leisure. Car hire is available at the station: a Fiat 500 costs €35 a day, petrol another €8 for the 40 km round trip.

Fill the tank before you arrive; the village pump closed in 1995 and the next fuel is back in Arévalo. Bring snacks, sun cream, and a fully charged phone—4G flickers in and out, and emergency calls route via a mast 12 km away. If you plan to photograph the Milky Way, pick a moonless night: the nearest street light is 8 km distant, making darkness so complete that torches feel intrusive.

Leave nothing behind. There are no bins; residents divide rubbish into compost heaps and a communal skip collected every Wednesday. Miss the slot and your crisp packets ride shotgun to the next town.

Some visitors find the hush unnerving. After the third hour you may catch yourself speaking aloud just to confirm you still exist. Others discover that thirty souls can create a society, provided nobody hurries. Donvidas offers no souvenirs, no Wi-Fi password, no Instagram moment beyond the horizon itself. What it does provide is a calibration point for urban clocks: a place where time is measured by wheat height and church bells that ring for the dead, the harvest, and little else. Arrive expecting nothing, bring water, and the plateau will return the favour with a sky so wide you’ll wonder why you ever tolerated ceilings.