Carabias

The church bells ring at noon, and every dog in Carabias starts howling. It's not orchestrated—just fifty-odd animals responding to the same ancient prompt that has marked village time since the 16th century. From the single bench outside the closed panadería, you can watch the entire performance: stone houses with their wooden doors painted ox-blood red, a woman in house slippers carrying a loaf wrapped in newspaper, and those dogs, each stationed on a different terracotta roof like discordant church bells themselves.

At 1,050 metres above sea level, Carabias sits high enough that the air carries a permanent nip, even when Madrid swelters 90 kilometres south. The altitude shapes everything here. Water boils differently. Bread rises slower. And when the meseta wind picks up—which it does most afternoons—conversation moves indoors because shouting over it feels uncivilised. Winter arrives early; the first frost often catches October unaware, and snow isn't unheard-of by December. Summer brings relief rather than heat, with nights cool enough that locals still close their shutters against the chill.

The Arithmetic of Small Numbers

Fifty-five residents. One church. No shops. The economics of Carabias run on neighbourly IOUs and weekly trips to Villacastín, twelve kilometres west. The village bar closed in 2008 when its proprietor died; her daughters live in Valladolid and never returned. What remains is a place that functions through subtraction rather than addition. Each departure—whether through death or the steady drift towards provincial capitals—creates absence rather than vacancy. Houses don't get sold; they simply stop opening their curtains.

This numerical honesty extends to the landscape. The cereal fields surrounding Carabias stretch in unbroken squares of wheat and barley, their colours shifting from spring's electrical green to the toasted biscuit tones of late July. There's no dramatic topography to interrupt the view—just gentle rolls that might lift twenty metres over a kilometre. What catches the eye instead is scale: skies that extend beyond reasonable limits, and the way clouds cast shadows the size of small towns across the agricultural checkerboard.

Walking these tracks requires no specialised equipment. Stout shoes suffice for the farm roads that radiate from the village like bicycle spokes. One hour north brings you to the abandoned railway line that once connected Segovia to Ávila; its sleepers have been lifted, but the gravel bed provides firm walking through tunnels of young pine. Another path leads south towards the Ermita de la Soledad, a 17th-century hermitage that opens precisely twice yearly. The door was last unlocked for the Feast of the Cross in May; someone will unlock it again in September for the village's patronal celebrations.

What Passes for Entertainment

The fiesta schedule runs on agricultural rather than tourist time. August 15th marks the Assumption, when Carabias briefly inflates to perhaps 200 souls. Former residents return from Madrid and Barcelona, pitching tents in their grandparents' gardens and arguing over boundary walls long since fallen. The village square—more accurately a triangle where three streets converge—hosts a communal paella. In 2023, they needed three pans: one for the meat-eaters, one for the vegetarians, and one for the coeliacs, because even tradition must accommodate modern dietary requirements.

Otherwise, diversion comes through observation. The retired shepherd who walks his two remaining sheep through the streets each morning at precisely eight-thirty. The way television aerials lean at identical angles, as though bowing to some invisible authority. The English teacher from Birmingham who bought number 14 Calle Real fifteen years ago and now grows vegetables where her patio should be. She'll offer coffee if you catch her watering, though conversation tends towards the difficulties of obtaining proper cheddar rather than local sightseeing tips.

Practicalities require planning. The nearest cash machine stands outside the petrol station in Villacastín, which closes at 21:30 sharp. Mobile reception varies by provider—Vodafone functions near the church tower; O2 requires a walk to the village edge. The single bus from Segovia arrives Tuesday and Friday at 14:15, then turns around immediately for the return journey. Miss it, and you'll wait three days or start hitchhiking.

The Restaurant That Isn't There

Food happens in houses rather than establishments. The closest restaurant lies five kilometres away in Santo Tomé del Puerto, where Casa Juan serves roast lamb (€18 per portion) from a wood-fired oven that's been burning since 1987. They'll also prepare cocido segoviano if you phone ahead—minimum two people, three hours' notice, €22 each. In Carabias itself, meals emerge through informal arrangements. The baker's sister-in-law might sell you half a roast chicken if you ask nicely at the right time of month. Otherwise, self-catering proves simplest: Villacastín's supermarket stays open until 20:30, stocks UHT milk and decent Rioja, and stocks those Spanish crisps that taste faintly of paprika and childhood holidays.

What you won't find: souvenir shops, guided tours, or interpretive centres. The village's single information panel stands weather-faded and vandalised beside the church, its QR code linking to a tourism website last updated during Spain's EU presidency in 2010. This isn't oversight—it's accuracy. Carabias offers nothing packaged, nothing curated. The experience arrives unmediated: the sound of grain dryers humming across autumn fields, the smell of woodsmoke from chimneys that never quite stop smoking even in June, the way afternoon light turns the stone walls the colour of burnt cream.

Departure as Arrival

Leave Carabias heading east on the CL-601, and the village shrinks instantly in the rear-view mirror. Within two kilometres it becomes indistinguishable from any other brown smudge on the brown landscape. But the altitude difference registers immediately—descending 300 metres towards Segovia brings a temperature rise of several degrees, and the air thickens with traffic fumes and civilisation's complications.

This is Carabias's particular gift: perspective through absence rather than presence. Not what you see or do, but what you don't. No traffic lights. No queues. No admission charges or audio guides or gift shops selling fridge magnets shaped like the local monument (there isn't one). Just the realisation that places continue existing even when no one's watching—sheep still need walking, bread still needs baking, and those dogs will still howl at noon regardless of who's listening from the bench outside the closed bakery.

Come for an hour, stay for a day, but don't expect to tick boxes. Carabias offers instead the rarer commodity of genuine in-between time—those liminal hours when travel stops being about collection and starts becoming about subtraction. When you realise that fifty-five people and a church might constitute not limitation but sufficiency. When the dogs finally stop howling, and the only sound left is wind moving across wheat fields that stretch farther than any single lifetime could reasonably walk.