Higueras

The church bell strikes noon, yet only two cars sit in the plaza. One belongs to the baker who drove up from Jerica at dawn; the other to a retired teacher from Utrecht who arrived last autumn and never found a reason to leave. In Higueras, population fifty on a confident day, the siesta starts early and lasts until the shadows stretch clear across the Alto Palancia valley.

At 669 metres above sea-level, the village hovers just high enough to dodge the August furnace of the coast, yet remains low enough for almond and olive trees to cling to the terraced slopes. The difference is tangible: drive the 45 minutes from Castellón’s beaches and the air thins, the pine scent sharpens, and the metallic rasp of cicadas replaces the rhythmic crash of waves. It is the Spain that package brochures leave blank.

Stone houses the colour of weathered parchment line a single web of lanes barely two metres wide. Builders used what the hillside offered—schist and limestone hacked into blocks the size of cider crates—so every wall carries the fossilised ripple of ancient seabeds. Roofs wear curved Arabic tiles fired in nearby Onda four centuries ago; when the easterly levante wind funnels up the gorge they clatter like loose crockery, the only soundtrack besides church bells and the occasional tractor.

A Landscape that Forgets to be Photogenic

Spring arrives late. Not until mid-April do poppies splatter vermilion across the abandoned almond terraces, and the first wild asparagus pushes through bramble thickets. By June the grass has already bleached to straw, stone walls crack, and the sierra turns the colour of lion hide. Farmers call it secano—dry farming country—where olives survive on 400 mm of rain a year and every row of vines is spaced wide enough for a mule to pass. The result is a mosaic of survival rather than postcard perfection: crumbling cortijos, iron-rich soil, and the skeletal remains of carob trees grazed to death by goats.

Walkers arrive for exactly this austerity. An unsigned path drops from the upper cemetery, zig-zagging down an escarpment to the abandoned hamlet of Los Llanos, three kilometres away. The route follows a mule track older than the Reconquista; stone crosses engraved 1698 still mark spots where merchants once paid tolls in saffron. Griffon vultures wheel overhead, wings skimming thermals with the efficiency of RAF pilots. Carry water—there is no bar, no fountain, and mobile reception vanishes after the first ridge.

Summer hiking demands an early start. Dawn temperatures can dip to 14 °C even in July, perfect for the climb to El Pinar, a 1,050-metre vantage that serves up a saw-toothed horizon of the Iberian system. By two o’clock the thermometer has added another twenty degrees and the smart money retires to the plaza’s single tavern for cafe cortado and a game of dominoes thick with Valencian dialect.

What Passes for Gastronomy

Forget tasting menus and slate plates. Higueras eats like it always has: what the land yields, supplemented by what can be salted, smoked or stored in earthenware jars. Thursday is cazuela day at Bar La Parada—an iron pot of rabbit, runner beans and snails simmered with ñora peppers so mild they register more smoke than heat. A plate costs €9 and comes with a basket of bread still dusted in flour from the Jerica bakery. Vegetarians can try gazpacho manchego, a hearty stew of tomato and bread completely unrelated to the chilled Andalucian soup; ask for it sin conejo if the sight of game offends.

Winter means matanza—the family pig slaughter—and for two weekends the air carries the metallic tang of fresh blood and smoked paprika. Strangers won’t be invited to help stuff morcilla, yet the tavern will serve migas—fried breadcrumbs laced with chorizo and grapes—accompanied by stories of how half the village once emigrated to Lille and sent wages home in envelopes stuffed with francs. Wash it down with red wine from Utiel-Requena sold in unlabelled litre bottles for €4; it tastes of liquorice and iron, and after the second glass you’ll understand why no-one hurries.

When the Village Swells

On the assumption that half the diaspora returns, mid-August trebles the population. The fiesta of the Assumption strings paper banners across the plaza, a sound system appears from someone’s cousin in Sagunto, and the priest blesses a procession that takes all of eight minutes to complete its circuit. Outsiders are welcome but not courted: buy a €3 raffle ticket for the ham, join the paella queue at midnight, and try not to wince when the brass band plays Eye of the Tiger at full tilt. Accommodation is impossible unless you booked the lone guesthouse in February, so most day-trip from Jerica and leave before the brass band strikes up again at four.

Winter feasts are quieter. On the eve of San Antonio, 16 January, neighbours stack vine prunings into a three-metre pyre below the church. The mayor lights it at dusk; children toast chestnuts while grandparents mutter that the old ways beat television anyway. Flakes of ash drift upwards, indistinguishable from the season’s first snow fluries.

The Road Less Paved

Access is half the story. Leave the AP-7 coastal motorway at Castellón and the A-23 zips inland through orange groves, then cork-oak forest, then suddenly nowhere at all. Turn off at Jerica, follow the CV-195, and after twenty minutes the tarmac narrows to a single lane clawed into limestone. Google Maps shows the route as a confident grey line; reality involves blind hairpins, kilometre-reverse sections, and the distinct possibility of meeting a delivery van whose driver has nerves of titanium. In winter, fog pools so thickly that cat’s eyes would be useless even if someone had installed them. Chains are sensible from December to March; in summer, a small car suffices, but clutch control gets tested.

There is no petrol station, no cashpoint, and the village shop opens “when the owner feels like it”—three afternoons a week if the weather’s kind. Come provisioned: bread, ham, tomatoes, a bottle of something stiff for when the generator howls and the lights flicker. Phone signal hops between one bar and none; download offline maps and tell your host how late you intend to be, because nobody else will notice a stranger’s absence.

Leaving the Echo Behind

Head back down the switchbacks at sunset and the village shrinks to a single terracotta smudge between pine-dark ridges. The sea reappears—a silver thread on the horizon—yet the smell of salt is gone for good. Higueras offers no souvenir stalls, no flamenco tablaos, no marina cocktails. What it does provide is a calibration service for urban clocks: three days here and a British mobile chirping BBC headlines feels like an intrusion from another planet. Whether that constitutes a holiday or a penance depends on your tolerance for places where the loudest noise after midnight is your own pulse.