Castillo de Villamalefa

Dawn over the Alto Mijares

At 808 metres, the morning light reaches Castillo de Villamalefa before it touches the coast. From the stone bench beside the ruined castle wall, you can watch the sun lift out of the Mediterranean haze sixty kilometres away, then slide across empty valleys where almond blossom shows white as stray snow. The village wakes slowly: a tractor coughs, a dog barks once, shutters clack open. By eight o’clock the silence is so complete you can hear almonds dropping onto flat roofs.

This is the daily soundtrack for roughly one hundred inhabitants, a population figure that can double when weekend walkers appear and halve again when the harvest ends. Size is the point here. The place occupies four short streets, one bar, one grocery that unlocks only when its owner returns from feeding her chickens, and a hotel with eight rooms. Anything grander would feel absurd.

A geography lesson in slow motion

Reaching the village is a master-class in Spanish provincial driving. Leave the AP-7 at Castellón, head inland on the CV-20, then peel away onto the CV-195 and finally the CV-198, a strip of tarmac no wider than a Surrey lane that corkscrews upward through holm-oak and pine. Lorries laden with beehives use the same road; patience and second gear are compulsory. Mobile signal vanishes at the 600-metre contour, reappears briefly in a lay-by labelled “Mirador de la Higuera”, then dies again. Download offline maps before you leave the lowlands.

The last twelve kilometres take twenty-five minutes. By the time the church tower finally glides into view the temperature has dropped six degrees. In July that relief is welcome; in January it means frost on the windscreen and a hotel owner who keeps blankets stacked like towels.

What passes for a centre

The Plaza de la Constitución is a triangle of cracked concrete shaded by a single fig tree. On one side stands the parish church of La Asunción, its doorway a hotchpotch of Romanesque arch and Baroque patching. Opposite, Bar Central opens at seven for coffee and stays open until the last customer leaves, usually before midnight. Between them the village shop sells tinned tuna, goat’s cheese wrapped in clingfilm, and local almonds by the kilo. That is essentially the high street. There is no cash machine; the nearest ATM is nineteen kilometres away in Caudiel, so bring euro notes unless you fancy an extra round trip.

Trails, not tiles

Castillo de Villamalefa makes no attempt to compete with coastal Spain. Instead it offers kilometres of empty footpath. The GR-33 long-distance trail slices straight through the village, way-marked by white-and-red stripes that are easy to follow until the forest swallows them. Eastward, the path drops into the Mijares gorge, passing abandoned charcoal platforms where villagers once baked holm-oak into fuel. Westward it climbs to the ridge of El Remedio at 1,150 metres; allow ninety minutes and carry water because the only fountain is back in the plaza.

Spring brings the best hiking window: daytime highs around 18 °C, nights cool enough for a jumper, and almond blossom drifting across the paths like confetti. October is almost as good, with wild thyme scenting the air and the first wood smoke curling from chimneys. Mid-summer hikes demand an early start; by eleven the sun is brutal and shade scarce. Winter can be startlingly sharp—sleet is not unknown—and the CV-198 occasionally closes when fog turns the switchbacks treacherous.

Food that knows its postcode

Evenings revolve around the hotel dining room because there is nowhere else. The three-course menú del día costs €14 and rarely strays beyond local ingredients: roast lamb scented with rosemary, migas—fried breadcrumbs—studded with chorizo, and almond tart that tastes of marzipan left briefly in the oven. Wine comes from the Alt Millars cooperative, sold by the litre in plain bottles; it is light, almost Beaujolais in style, and the barman will top up your plastic water bottle if you ask.

For self-caterers the village shop stocks basics, but serious provisioning needs a detour to Montanejos, twenty-five minutes down the mountain. Its Saturday market yields Manchego, wind-dried sausages and crusty bread that survives the climb back uphill. If you arrive in March, farmers sell surplus almonds from car boots at €3 a kilo; by December the price has doubled and the nuts taste of cold storage.

When the village remembers it can party

The calendar contains two pulses of noise. Fiesta de la Asunción, 15 August, drags home every exile: grandchildren who now work in Valencia, gardeners from Benidorm, even a retired opera singer who once sang in Covent Garden. The plaza fills with long tables, a brass band plays pasodobles until two in the morning, and teenagers sneak off to the almond groves with bottles of horchata laced with rum. Three days later the village exhales and returns to whispers.

January brings San Antón. At dusk the villagers pile branches into a bonfire so large it warms the church wall. Dogs, goats and the occasional pet rabbit are blessed with holy water flicked from a sprig of rosemary; afterwards everyone drinks hot chocolate thickened with cornflour and sweetened with anisette. The fire collapses into embers by nine o’clock, and the temperature prompts even the dogs to head indoors.

The honest verdict

Castillo de Villamalefa is not for everyone. Shoppers will be miserable, beach addicts baffled, nightclubbers apoplectic. The village suits walkers who measure a day by kilometres covered, readers happy to finish a paperback on a terrace, and anyone who regards a distant tractor as ambient noise. Mobile reception is patchy, the nearest beach is an hour away, and you will eat almonds in some form at almost every meal. Accept those terms and the reward is a front-row seat to one of Spain’s emptier landscapes, priced at village rates rather than Costa mark-ups. Pack boots, cash and a sense of altitude—then let the almonds outnumber you.