Cotes

The church bell strikes seven and the valley responds. Not with traffic or café chatter, but with the mechanical click of irrigation gates opening and the low hum of a single tractor starting its day. From the modest bell tower—visible from every corner of Cotes—you can watch the entire village wake up: 320 souls, three streets, and more orange trees than people stretching towards the horizon.

This is the Ribera Alta's agricultural heartland, forty-five minutes south of Valencia city, where the Turia River's ancient irrigation channels still divide the land into neat rectangles of green. The Arabs engineered this system a millennium ago; the locals simply never saw reason to change it. Water flows through stone-lined acequias at scheduled hours, marked by brass plaques that read "Turno de riego: Martes 4-6"—irrigation turn: Tuesday 4-6pm. Miss your slot and wait three days for the next.

The Arithmetic of Small

Cotes operates on different mathematics. The bakery closed in 1998 when the last baker retired; bread arrives daily from Montserrat, six kilometres away. The village bar opens at 7am for coffee, closes at 2pm for siesta, and might reopen at 5pm if Paco feels like it. There's no cash machine—locals drive to L'Alcúdia for money, or more likely, don't bother with cash at all. Credit works differently when everyone's grandmother went to school together.

What the village lacks in amenities it compensates for with space. Park anywhere. The plaza de España accommodates roughly forty vehicles; on an average Tuesday afternoon, it holds three. One belongs to the mayor (also the plumber), another to the English couple who bought the corner house for €42,000 during the 2010 property crash, and the third to someone visiting their citrus groves. Street parking regulations don't exist because they'd require someone to enforce them, and that someone would probably be related to half the drivers.

The houses tell their own story. Stone portals dating from 1890 open onto patios where drying laundry competes with stored agricultural equipment. Some facades wear fresh coats of terracotta paint; others crumble gently, revealing layers of previous centuries like tree rings. Nobody rushes restoration here. When a roof needs retiling, it happens. When it doesn't, the house waits, sagging gracefully under clay tiles that have survived three civil wars and countless harvests.

Working the Equation

Between November and April, the mathematics shifts. Cotes handles roughly 2,000 tonnes of oranges during these months, though you'd never guess from the village quiet. The action happens in the groves: crews of pickers move methodically through rows, filling plastic crates that stack eight high on flatbed trucks. Each tree produces approximately 400 oranges annually; with 45,000 trees in the municipal boundaries, that's eighteen million pieces of fruit. The numbers boggle, yet the valley absorbs this industry with barely a sound.

Walk the agricultural tracks at 8am and witness the harvest's choreography. A tractor towing eight empty crates stops beside a grove. Two men lift aluminium ladders from the trailer, lean them against trees at forty-five-degree angles, and begin ascending with canvas bags slung across their shoulders. They pick with both hands simultaneously, dropping fruit into bags that hold roughly twenty kilos each. When full, they descend carefully—these ladders cost €180 each, more than some villagers earn weekly—and empty bags into crates. The process repeats every thirty metres, all day, every day, weather permitting.

The irrigation channels create their own ecosystem. Moorish engineers built them with slight gradients—barely perceptible, yet water flows continuously from the Turia's headwaters to the Mediterranean, sixty kilometres away. Carp thrive in these channels; elderly men appear at dusk with simple rod-and-reel setups, catching dinner while discussing village politics. Herons stalk the shallows, stabbing at frogs. The water runs clear enough to see your reflection, assuming you can find a section shaded from the intense Valencian sun.

Seasonal Calculus

Spring transforms the valley into a perfumed calculator. When 45,000 orange trees bloom simultaneously, the air becomes almost viscous with azahar scent. The blossom lasts precisely seventeen days, usually mid-April, though climate change has made forecasting unreliable. During this period, beekeepers arrive from Castellón with industrial hives, parking white wooden boxes in grove corners. The resulting orange blossom honey fetches premium prices at Valencia's Mercado Central—€14 per kilo wholesale, double that retail.

Summer operates differently. Temperatures regularly exceed 38°C, and the village empties by 2pm. Even the dogs seek shade, sprawling beneath cars that haven't moved in weeks. The citrus workers shift their schedules: 6am to 1pm, siesta, then return from 6pm until dark. This is when you'll see them at the bar, drinking café con hielo and discussing water allocations with the intensity of stock traders. An illegal wells fine costs €30,000—more than most farmers gross annually—but the drought makes risk calculations complex.

Autumn brings the valley's finest walking weather. Temperatures hover around 24°C, the channels run full from September rains, and the orange trees develop their distinctive green-and-gold fruiting pattern. The village celebrates its harvest festival during the first October weekend, though "festival" might overstate matters. There's paella cooked over wood fires in the plaza, using rabbits shot by local hunters the previous evening. Someone's uncle brings wine from Utiel-Requena in five-litre plastic containers. Dancing starts at midnight and finishes when the generator fuel runs out.

Practical Realities

Getting here requires planning. The last regular bus left in 2012 when subsidies ended. Rent a car at Valencia airport—expect to pay €25 daily for a Fiat 500, more during Las Fallas—and take the A-7 south towards Alicante. Exit at 322 signposted L'Alcúdia/Montserrat, then follow CV-564 through endless citrus groves. GPS sometimes suggests shortcuts across agricultural tracks; ignore these unless you fancy explaining to a farmer why you're driving through their irrigation system.

Accommodation options remain limited. There's no hotel, hostel, or official camping. The village approach involves staying elsewhere—L'Alcúdia offers functional three-star properties from €45 nightly—or renting one of three village houses occasionally available for short-term lets. Contact comes via WhatsApp, payments through bank transfer, keys collected from someone's cousin who works at the petrol station. It sounds complicated until you realise this system has functioned smoothly for fifteen years.

What to bring: comfortable walking shoes with decent grip—the agricultural tracks turn muddy after irrigation. A hat becomes essential from May through September; the sun reflects off pale agricultural soil with brutal intensity. Binoculars reward birdwatchers: hoopoes, bee-eaters, and golden orioles inhabit the grove edges. Most importantly, pack patience. Cotes operates on agricultural time, where waiting three days for someone to fix your rental's broken shower seems reasonable because their oranges need harvesting.

The village won't suit everyone. Nightlife means drinking Estrella at the bar until it closes, then perhaps continuing at someone's kitchen table. Shopping requires driving twenty minutes for basics, forty for anything sophisticated. Mobile reception varies by provider and weather—Vodafone works reasonably, Orange less so. But for those seeking to understand how Valencia's interior functions beyond the city beaches and paella restaurants, Cotes offers an education in agricultural arithmetic. One village, 320 residents, eighteen million oranges, and a way of life that modernity hasn't quite managed to subtract.