Palacios de Sanabria

The slate roofs of Palacios de Sanabria are still flecked with frost at eleven in the morning, even in late April. At 950 m above the Duero basin the village sits level with the summit of Britain’s Ben Nevis, yet here it is simply the natural height at which Castilians have built homes for eight centuries. Thin air, thin population: barely two hundred souls remain, and the stone houses—granite walls, hand-split pizarra tiles, timber balconies—outnumber them comfortably.

Approaching from the A-52 you leave the motorway at Puebla de Sanabria, climb eleven kilometres of switch-back tarmac, and crest a ridge that feels like the roof of León province. Wheat fields stop abruptly; oak and sweet-chestnut take over. The first slate roof appears, then a cluster, then the modest tower of the parish church. No signposts promise “authentic Spain” because no-one has thought to put them up. Palacios simply exists, and the road rolls through it.

Inside the village the gradient keeps climbing. Calle Real, the only through-street, tilts at nearly ten per cent; villagers over seventy walk it twice daily to fetch bread from the white van that doubles as bakery. Houses are pressed shoulder-to-shoulder against the slope, their ground floors a storey lower at the back than the front. It is architecture born of winter: shared walls conserve heat, narrow lanes deflect wind, and every chimney is wide enough to swallow a lamb—useful when January snow cuts the pass for days.

What passes for a centre

There is no plaza mayor in the textbook sense, merely a widening of the lane where the church, the fountain and the former school face one another across ten metres of cobbles. The church, dedicated to la Asunción, is built from the same grey granite as the houses; its bell tolls the hours but keeps its own time, three minutes fast from May to October. Beside it the stone fountain still runs potable water—welcome for walkers on the Camino Sanabrés variant of the Via de la Plata, who arrive dusty after the 18 km stage from Rionegro del Puente. They are the only predictable visitors, and the village accommodates them with a single private house that lets three spare bedrooms. The owner, María José, will appear on the doorstep if she sees rucksacks; if the rooms are taken she telephones Otero de Sanabria, 5 km further on. There is no Plan B, and that is the entire accommodation stock.

Eating (or not)

Palacios does not do dinner choice. At seven-thirty María José asks whether you want “cena”—a bowl of stewed hen and chickpeas, bread, and a plastic litre of her husband’s home-fermented red wine. The stew is edible, the wine tastes like liquid cardboard. Wise pilgrims stop at the mini-shop (open 09:00–11:00 and 17:00–19:00 except Sunday afternoon) to buy a €3.50 bottle of Toro or a chunk of local cured chorizo. Breakfast is instant coffee, toast and apricot jam; if you need protein, carry it. Payment is cash only—euros, not card—and you will still need change for tomorrow’s lunch because the next ATM is eleven kilometres away in Puebla de Sanabria.

Walking out

The compensation for culinary austerity is immediate access to empty mountains. A way-marked footpath leaves the upper village past an abandoned hórreo (stone granary on stilts) and climbs 350 m through sweet-chestnut to the Cando pass, where the view opens west toward the Sanabria lake, 15 km distant as the kite flies. Griffon vultures circle at eye level; in May the undergrowth glows with genista and the last of the snow patches on the Sierra Segundera. Allow three hours there and back, carry water, and download an offline map first—mobile signal flickers between Vodafone and nothing.

A gentler option follows the old drove-road south to Otero, shadowing an irrigation channel that never runs dry. Farmers still move cattle along it; meet them and you will be asked, without fail, whether it rains as much in Inglaterra as television claims. The loop is 7 km, almost level, and returns you in time for the bread van’s second visit.

Seasons matter

Spring and autumn are the cooperative months: daytime 18 °C, nights cool enough for the hearth to feel welcome, tracks firm underfoot. Summer brings big-sky sunshine and 28 °C afternoons, but also weekenders from Zamora city who fill the lane with hatchbacks and conversation—still only twenty people, yet it feels crowded. Winter is a different contract. Snow can fall from October to May; the council grades the road, yet ice will keep most drivers away. Those who stay witness the village at its most honest: wood-smoke at dawn, silence you can measure in kilometres, and night skies so dark that Orion’s belt looks like a lighthouse. Bring chains or a 4×4, and don’t rely on the shop staying open.

A festival, briefly

For three days around 15 August the population doubles. Emigrants who left for Madrid or Barcelona in the 1970s reclaim ancestral houses, string light bulbs across the lane and hold a communal paella on planks laid over oil drums. There is no programme; events are communicated by personal invitation or by watching which door opens at nine o’clock. Outsiders are welcome but not fussed over—buy a raffle ticket for the ham, dance one pasodoble, and you have participated.

Leaving

The descent toward Puebla feels faster than the climb up, partly because the road falls 400 m in eleven kilometres, partly because Palacios loosens its grip once you know its rules. In the mirror the roofs disappear first, then the church tower, then the ridge itself. What lingers is the realisation that some corners of Europe still price rooms by the honesty of slate and the thickness of walls rather than by star ratings, and that a village can survive on bread vans, fountain water and the stubborn belief that 950 m is a perfectly reasonable altitude at which to live.