Moraleja de Matacabras

The grain silo still has the farmer’s surname painted on in white letters that have faded since 1987. From the single road that threads through Moraleja de Matacabras it looks like any other concrete cylinder rising from the wheat, yet it is the closest thing the village has to a landmark. Walk past it and the asphalt turns to packed earth; keep walking and the earth turns to stone wall, then to open field. That is the entire urban tour, five minutes at dawdling speed, and it tells you most of what you need to know about a place whose population can fit inside a double-decker bus with seats to spare.

The Name Nobody Agrees On

Matacabras translates, bluntly, as “goat-slayer”. Ask three locals how their village acquired the suffix and you will receive three versions: Moorish raiders slaughtering livestock, nineteenth-century tax collectors seizing animals in lieu of coin, or simply a misheard placename that stuck. The uncertainty is part of the local currency; residents trade anecdotes the way other places trade postcards. What is certain is that the hamlet sits at 780 m on the high plateaux of Ávila’s comarca of La Moraña, a wind-scoured buffer between the granite Sierra de Ávila and the flat cereal ocean of Old Castile. The altitude keeps July temperatures below the furnace levels of the Duero valley, but it also means that in January the wind can slice through a fleece as cleanly as any blade.

A Grid Drawn by Hand, Not by Planners

There are no signposted routes, no interpretation boards, no ticketed monuments. Instead you get a grid of three streets wide and four streets deep, edged on every side by fields that change colour with the agricultural calendar: emerald after the first autumn rains, ochre when the stubble is burned, silver under a hoar-frost morning. Houses are of the same stone and adobe, two storeys high, with timber doors blackened by centuries of grain dust. Upper-floor hatches, once used to swing sacks inside, now admit pigeons unless they have been nailed shut. Peer through the gaps and you may still see the original wooden beams, hand-hewn and as thick as a farmer’s thigh.

The parish church of San Pedro keeps the only bell that still rings the hour. It is locked most days; the key hangs behind the bar in nearby Santo Domingo de Silos—population 250—six kilometres away. That bar, Mesón de la Moraña, doubles as the nearest place to order a coffee or a bowl of judiones, the butter-fat white beans of the province. Expect to pay €9 for a plate large enough to count as supper, and do not ask for a vegan option; you will be met with polite incomprehension.

Walking Without Waymarks

Serious hikers sometimes arrive clutching the 1:50,000 Ávila map, hoping to stitch together the cattle tracks that radiate towards Fontiveros or El Bohodón. The tracks exist—two parallel ruts pressed into the clay by decades of Deutz-Fahr tractors—but they are not waymarked. A GPS trace helps, yet the simpler method is to memorise the grain-silo skyline and keep it over your left shoulder for the return leg. In April the paths are edged with wild red poppies; by late June the same earth has cracked into hexagonal plates that ring under your boots. Wild-life tally on a standard dawn circuit: crested lark, red-legged partridge, the occasional Egyptian mongoose darting between stone walls. Add a thermos and the walk is a half-day outing; add a wrong turn and you can be back in time for elevenses.

When the Village Reheats Itself

August turns the demographic dial from 55 to roughly 200. Grandchildren of locals arrive from Madrid or Valladolid, cars squeezing into gaps between hay bales. The fiestas patronales take place on the weekend nearest the 15th: a brass band hires the village square, someone roasts a pig in an oil-drum spit, and plastic tables appear as if from thin air. Visitors are welcome but not fussed over; buy a €3 raffle ticket for the ham leg and you have bought your citizenship for the night. By the 17th the cars leave, the square is swept, and the silence that returns is so complete you can hear the timed release of the church bell mechanism clicking before it strikes.

What You Will Not Find (and Might Miss)

There is no cash machine, no petrol station, no mobile coverage beyond 3G unless you stand on the stone bench outside the ayuntamiento. Accommodation within the village limits amounts to one rural cottage, Casa de los Moraños, rented by the week at €350; book through the provincial tourist office in Ávila because the owner, María Jesús, has no website and answers the phone only after the noon news. The nearest hotel is in Arévalo, 25 minutes by car, where the high-speed train from Madrid stops twice a day. Hire cars are therefore essential; the only bus, service 220, links Ávila to Arévalo on school-day timetables, meaning it leaves Moraleja at 07:05 and returns at 19:40. Miss it and you are thumbing a lift among wheat lorries.

Rain cancels more plans than crowds ever will. October cloudbursts turn the clay lanes into calf-deep glue; a 4×4 will still slide sideways towards the ditch. Conversely, midsummer drought bans outdoor barbecues: one spark from a disposable grill can set stubble alight faster than you can say “travel insurance”. Check the provincial fire-risk bulletin if you intend to camp.

Souvenirs No One Sells

You will not find fridge magnets. The nearest equivalent is a bottle of local extra-virgin oil pressed in Bohodón, sold from a porch fridge on the honour system: leave €6 in the tobacco tin. Buy two; the hillside olives grow slowly at this altitude and the oil carries a peppery kick that makes salads taste of the meseta itself. Likewise, if you ask nicely at the silo the foreman may fill a paper bag with dried chickpeas straight from the hopper—illegally, but with a conspiratorial shrug that suggests rural solidarity outweighs EU seed regulations.

Leaving Without a Story

Guidebooks often promise visitors they will “step back in time”. Moraleja de Matacabras offers something less marketable: a place where the present is simply stretched until it goes slack. You may arrive, walk the perimeter, photograph the fading silo, and still leave feeling you have missed the point—because the point is precisely the absence of one. Come for the quiet, stay for the beans, depart when the wind changes direction and carries the smell of rain across the wheat. You will not tick off a single world-class sight, yet months later, when someone mentions rural Spain, the image that surfaces will be of a concrete cylinder, a painted surname, and a horizon so wide it makes your city street feel temporary.