Carrascosa de la Sierra

The ham sails through the air in a perfect arc, chased by thirty drunk villagers and one very confused dog. This is the Friday night highlight of Carrascosa de la Sierra’s summer fiesta, a ritual that triples the population overnight and briefly convinces the 70-year-old mayor that the village might, against all odds, survive another decade.

At 1,184 metres, Carrascosa sits high enough for your ears to pop on the final approach, yet low enough to feel the full force of the Meseta’s weather tantrums. The thermometer can swing from –12 °C in January to 34 °C in August, and the wind has a habit of forgetting to stop. Stone houses huddle shoulder-to-shoulder along a single lane no wider than a Tesco delivery van, their Arabic tiles ballasted with rocks against uplift. Every wall is the same grey-brown as the hills behind, as if the mountain slowly digested the village and spat it back out.

What passes for a high street

There isn’t one. The only commerce is Bar Nico, open when Nico feels like it, which translates to roughly eleven o’clock until the last domino falls. Coffee costs €1.20 if the machine is working; beer is €1.50 and comes with a free lecture on why young people are ruining Spain. Next door, the ayuntamiento doubles as the post office on Tuesdays. Stamps are sold by the schoolteacher, who is also the priest’s niece and the only person under fifty still living here permanently. For anything more exotic than tinned tuna you drive 27 km to Soria, a provincial capital whose sole claim to fame is that hardly anyone bothers to visit.

The church of San Pedro keeps the same hours as Bar Nico. Push the heavy door and the smell of wax and mouse droppings drifts out. Inside, the altar cloth is embroidered with 1970s oranges and browns, the colour scheme of every British grandmother’s spare room. A laminated sheet explains, in Spanish only, that the roof was raised in 1642 after a snowstorm flattened the earlier nave. The font is still used; the last baptism was in 2019 for a baby whose parents drove up from Madrid, stayed twenty minutes, and left before the aguardiente was poured.

Walking without waymarks

Carrascosa is ringed by carrascas—holm oaks tough enough to bribe a goat—and an ocean of maritime pines planted during Franco’s paper-pulp boom. Footpaths exist because goats don’t read maps. Set off past the last house, follow the stone water channel, and within ten minutes you are alone except for the sound of your own breathing and, in October, distant shotgun pellets clipping branches during boar season. The GR-86 long-distance trail skirts the village boundary, but waymarking is sporadic; a confident bearing and a print-out from the Spanish IGN website beat trusting the faded yellow flashes painted by a shepherd in 1998.

A circular route south-east climbs to the Puerto de la Pinarra (1,520 m) and drops back along the dirt road used by loggers. Allow three hours, take more water than you think, and remember that shade is theoretical once you leave the valley floor. June hikers can expect to meet no one; September mushroom hunters will meet everyone, all carrying knives and opinions about rainfall.

The Spain that emptied

Seventy souls on the electoral roll. Twenty lights on after midnight. The primary school closed in 1998; the teacher left, the children had already gone. Yet the place refuses to die. A retired couple from Valencia arrive every May, repaint their grandparents’ house, host three weeks of family, and lock up again. A Madrid architect bought two ruins, merged them, installed underfloor heating, and now offers the keys to friends who want digital detox—no Wi-Fi, no Vodafone, no apologies. Even the British press parachuted in for the ham-tossing story, though nobody here has worked out why throwing jamón is more newsworthy than the fact the village has no GP.

Come for the fiesta last weekend of August and you will share a single chemical toilet with 400 returning emigrants. The council hires a sound system that could service Glastonbury; the playlist never advances beyond 1985. At 2 a.m. the plaza is a carpet of cans, at 7 a.m. the same plaza is spotless because Doña Felisa, 81, sweeps before the sun clears the pine ridge. If you want a bed you’ll be offered a sofa in someone’s cousin’s house; if you want breakfast you’d better like chorizo because that is what there is.

How to do it (and how not to)

Fly to Madrid, collect a hire car, head north on the A-2. After Medinaceli the motorway empties and the speed cameras thin out; you’ll see more storks than vehicles. Turn off at the signed junction for Almazán, then follow the SO-4116 into the hills. The final 12 km are twisty but paved; in winter carry chains because the snowplough reaches here last, if at all. Petrol up beforehand—village pumps closed in 2004.

Stay in Soria: the Parador sits on a clifftop with Gormley sculptures in the garden, doubles from €110 including a buffet strong enough to silence a trucker. Drive out after breakfast, reach Carrascosa by ten, walk until lunch, retreat before the afternoon heat or the November fog. Day-tripping is the sensible option; overnighting means either charming your way onto a floor or wild-camping discreetly among the pines—legal, tolerated, cold.

Bring everything: water, food, cash (no card machine for 25 km), fully charged phone that will still be useless once you drop into the valley. A pharmacy exists 7.5 km away in Almajano, open two mornings a week; the nearest A&E is Hospital Santa Bárbara, Soria. Accept that you are, for a few hours, beyond the reach of Deliveroo, Instagram stories, and roadside assistance. Silence, altitude, and the possibility of a ham hitting you on the head are the only amenities on offer. They cost nothing. Most years, that feels like a bargain.