San Pascual

At 881 metres, San Pascual sits just high enough for the air to feel thinner, the silence sharper. Forty-three residents remain in this stone-scattered settlement where the cereal plains of La Moraña buckle towards the Sierra de Ávila. Come on a weekday outside fiesta season and you'll share the streets with more storks than people; their nests crown the church tower like ragged crowns, clacking overhead while the village below gets on with the slow business of endurance.

The place announces itself with wind rather than signage. A single road peels off the N-403, twisting twelve kilometres through wheat and barley until the asphalt narrows and the horizon tilts. Parking is straightforward: find the church, stop the car, breathe. At this altitude the sky dominates everything – a vast, pale dome that makes the low houses seem even lower, the collapsed roofs more final. Some buildings have surrendered entirely, their walls sagging back into the earth from which they were raised. Others stand patched and stubborn, wooden doors painted the traditional ox-blood red now faded to terracotta streaks.

What passes for a centre

There is no plaza mayor in the textbook sense, just a widening where three lanes meet beside the Iglesia de San Pascual Bailón. The church is fifteenth-century core with later add-ons, its rough stone tower visible from every approach track. Step inside and the temperature drops ten degrees; the interior smells of candle smoke and centuries of grain dust blown in on the wind. Mass happens twice a month when the priest motors over from Fontiveros, population 900. On other Sundays the building stays locked, key held by the woman in the green house opposite – knock loudly, she’s hard of hearing.

A five-minute circuit on foot covers the inhabited parts. Calle del Medio retains the best-preserved ensemble: stone bases, adobe upper walls, curved terracotta tiles weighed down with stones against the gales. Peek through the iron grille opposite number 14 and you’ll see a bread oven intact, its domed roof blackened by decades of oak-fired baking. The owner, Julián, will show it to you if he’s around – he’s 78, speaks no English, and delights in demonstrating how the dough paddle still swings on its chain. His neighbour keeps donkeys in the next plot; they bray at strangers with stereotypical accuracy.

Walking the vacuum

San Pascual functions best as a launch point into the surrounding nothing. Head east on the farm track signed simply “Casa Albá” and within twenty minutes the village shrinks to a smudge. The path follows a low ridge; larks rise and fall among the stubble, and every so often a boot print appears – evidence of the region’s scattered hunters rather than tourist traffic. After four kilometres the track drops into a shallow valley where stone walls once divided wheat from sheep. The walls are collapsing, their limestone blocks cracked by frost and time. Sit here at dusk and you’ll understand why locals talk about “el ruido blanco” – the white noise of wind that erases thought.

Serious hikers can link up with the Cañada Real Leonesa, an ancient drove road that passes eight kilometres south. There’s no transport back, so arrange a taxi from Arévalo (€22 fixed rate) or accept the 16-kilometre loop via dirt roads. Summer walkers should carry more water than seems reasonable; the table-flat fields offer zero shade and July temperatures sit stubbornly in the mid-thirties. Winter is a different proposition: when snow drifts across from the Sierra the village road becomes impassable for days, supplies brought in by tractor or not at all.

Where to eat (and where not)

San Pascual itself has no bar, no shop, no ATM – plan accordingly. The nearest coffee arrives in Villacastín, 19 kilometres north-west along the CV-234, a road that ices over early. Bar La Parada opens at 7 am for truckers and serves a decent tortilla con pan for €3.50; they’ll make you a packed sandwich if you ask before ten. For a sit-down meal, continue to Arévalo where Asador La Casona does roast suckling lamb at weekends (€22 half-ration, reserve essential). Vegetarians face the usual Castilian challenge – expect eggs, cheese, and resignation.

Stock up before you arrive: Avila’s Mercadona (Monday-Saturday 9-21:30) is 45 minutes by car but the last reliable supermarket. Buy the local version of Judith’s yemas – egg-yolk sweets that travel better than they sound – and a bottle of Sierra de Gredos garnacha to drink while watching the sky perform its nightly colour shift.

The honesty clause

Let’s be plain: San Pascual will bore the socks off anyone chasing tapas trails or selfie backdrops. Rain turns the streets to mud in minutes; the only public toilet is behind the church and frequently locked. Mobile coverage flickers between none and one bar, depending on cloud cover. If forty-odd souls, a handful of semi-wild cats, and an awful lot of sky sound oppressive rather than liberating, stay on the A-6 to Segovia and don’t look back.

Yet for those curious about how Spain’s interior is quietly returning to wilderness, the village offers a front-row seat. Each ruined house marks a family that left for Madrid or Barcelona; each newly sheet-metal roof signals a weekend returnee fixing up grandparents’ place before it’s too late. The rhythm is slow enough to notice geckos hunting at dusk, to hear the change in wind direction that foretells tomorrow’s weather. Bring binoculars, a paperback you don’t mind never finishing, and enough petrol to leave when you’ve had enough. San Pascual won’t notice you arrive and won’t mourn your departure, but while you’re there the sky and the silence do a convincing impression of forever.