Husillos

The twelfth-century tower appears before anything else, rising from wheat stubble like a stone exclamation mark at 740 metres above sea level. From the approach road it looks absurdly large for the scatter of low houses below – the first hint that Husillos, a dot on the Palencia plain, once punched far above its demographic weight.

That tower belongs to Santa María, formerly the church of an Augustinian canonry powerful enough to command rents across Tierra de Campos. The building is still the village’s town hall, school, cinema and social club rolled into one: farmers lean bicycles against its sandstone walls while discussing barley prices, and the priest unlocks only when a visitor knocks. Step inside and the nave feels refrigerated even in July; stone keeps the plateau’s extremes at bay, winter or summer. Capital carvings – Daniel in the lion’s den, vines that curl like green wood – are crisp enough to make you check the date again. Admission is free, but a €2 donation box funds the slow fight against damp.

Outside, fragments of the cloister lie in the grass like a giant’s game of dominoes. One arcade still stands; the rest is stacked for safekeeping until someone finds €400,000 to roof it. There is no interpretive board, no audio guide, just the wind and the smell of dry straw. Honesty, rather than presentation, is the local style.

A Plain That Hides Its History

Husillos sits halfway between León and Valladolid, forty minutes’ drive from either on the A-62. The motorway slices across Tierra de Campos, a high, treeless tableland that the Romans called “the breadbasket of Hispania”. Today the harvest is mechanical: combine harvesters work through the night in July, headlights floating like UFOs. By August the stubble is burnt gold; by February frost whitewashes every furrow. At 744 m the air is thin enough to make a brisk walk feel like exercise, and nights stay cool even when Madrid swelters 200 km south.

Drive in on the N-601 and the only traffic jam is caused by a tractor turning into its yard. There is no petrol station, no cash machine, no supermarket – just a single bar, La Abadía, that opens at seven for coffee and churros, closes for siesta, and reopens when the owner feels like it. Monday is the risky day: if the till is already full of coins, she may not bother. Stock up in Palencia first.

What You Can (and Can’t) Eat

The menu is chalked daily on a blackboard. Lechazo – milk-fed lamb roasted in a wood-fired oven – arrives on a metal platter, the meat so tender it parts from the bone at the sight of a fork. A medio is plenty for two and costs around €24; order it mid-morning so the oven has time to reach temperature. Vegetarians get sopa de ajo, a smoky garlic broth with a poached egg that tastes like French onion soup with attitude. The local wine is Alianza, a pale, unoaked white from nearby Cigales that slips down like Sauvignon Blanc on holiday.

Pudding is tarta de queso made with raw-milk sheep’s cheese. It is not New-York style; expect a wobble rather than a wedge, and a faint lanolin scent that divides the table. Coffee comes in glass tumblers – accept it, milk is extra, and there is no decaf.

Walking Without Waymarks

There are no signed footpaths, but the GR-88 long-distance trail passes four kilometres south if you fancy a leg-stretch. Otherwise simply pick any farm track and walk; the land is so open you can see your car glinting on the horizon. In spring the fields are emerald and larks never shut up; in October stubble fires smudge the sky the colour of burnt sugar. Keep an eye out for great bustards – turkey-sized birds that stalk the furrows like Victorian headmistresses. Binoculars are essential; the birds will not wait for you to zoom.

After rain the clay sticks to boots like wet cement; in July the top inch turns to flour and coats your shins white. There is no shade, and the UV index is brutal at altitude. Carry water, a hat, and someone who can read a compass if the plain’s sameness starts to play tricks.

When the Village Wakes Up

For 361 days Husillos murmurs. Then, around 8 September, the population triples. The fiesta honours Our Lady with a brass band that rehearses for a week beforehand, ensuring every household knows the trumpet solo by heart. A marquee goes up opposite the church, paella is stirred in pans the size of satellite dishes, and teenagers who left for Bilbao or Barcelona reappear with toddlers and regional accents. Street parking becomes impossible; squeeze into the gravel patch by the cemetery or arrive before eleven.

August brings a softer reunion: evening open-air cinema projected against the church wall, plastic chairs laid out in rows. The film is whatever the council could licence cheaply – last year it was the new Almodóvar with dodgy subtitles. Bring a cushion; the stone step is unforgiving after two hours.

Winter Arithmetic

January daylight lasts nine hours and the thermometer can dip to –8 °C. The church is unheated, so visit at midday when the sun side-slides through the south portal and picks out the capitals in gold. If snow blows in from the Cantabrian cordillera the village shuts; the Palencia road is cleared first, but the short cut to Frómista stays white for days. Chains are rarely needed, yet hire cars fitted with summer tyres will spin on the slightest incline. A thermos of coffee in the boot is cheaper than a tow truck.

Beds, Bills and Bad Phone Signal

There is no hotel. The single Airbnb is a stone house that sleeps six, flagged by British guests for “spotless” and “great Wi-Fi” – though the router struggles when someone microwaves leftover lechazo. Price hovers around €90 per night, two-night minimum. Palencia, 23 km north, has the nearest beds: the Monclús is an old-fashioned three-star where rooms cost €55 including garage parking, handy if you’re hauling a road bike.

Mobile coverage is patchy. Vodafone works on the church steps; EE customers need to stand on the playground slide. Treat it as nature’s way of telling you to look up: the plateau’s sky is enormous, and the Milky Way on a clear winter night is brighter than any pub TV.

The Exit Road

Leave at dawn in July and you’ll meet tractors heading out for the morning shift, lights bouncing over the waves of wheat. The tower shrinks in the rear-view mirror until it becomes just another shard on the horizon, no more remarkable than a silo – which, for the people who live here, is exactly what it is. Husillos does not sell itself, and it will not entertain you on command. What it offers is the chance to calibrate your sense of scale: a village the size of a British housing estate once governed landscapes you can still drive across in an hour. See it, walk it, and the plain will never look empty again.