Cirueña

The first thing you notice is the silence. Not countryside hush, but the echoing quiet of a place built for 5,000 that houses barely 200. Apartment blocks stand shuttered, balconies without chairs, underground car parks gated shut. Then a golf buggy whirs past, the driver raising two fingers in the same greeting he’s given every walker since 2008. Ciruena sits 754 m above the Riojan plain, 6 km uphill from Santo Domingo de la Calzada, and it feels like two villages stapled together: a spectral modern estate and a scatter of stone houses that were here long before the camino arrows arrived.

The climb and the contrast

Most people arrive on foot, lungs burning after the 200-metre ascent from the river. The camino enters through a tunnel of poplars, spits you onto a greensward fairway, then signs direct you straight past the emptiness. Grey blocks line boulevards wide enough for traffic that never came. Grass pokes through tarmac. Yet forty paces left of the arrows, the old village clings to its ridge: low houses, ochre plaster, timber beams, the thud of a single-barrel diesel generator outside the family-run albergue. Altitude keeps summer heat tolerable until eleven, but by noon the sun ricochets off pale concrete; anyone with sense is already inside the golf club ordering a café con leche and a plate of surprisingly gentle paella.

What you actually see

There is no cathedral, no Michelin plaque, no souvenir shop. The parish church is locked more often than not; its bell tolls the hour and little else. Instead, the appeal is the lesson in recent Spanish history written across the streets. Peek through the glass doors of the show-flat block: sales office furniture still in situ, price lists curling on the wall (two-bed, €165,000, 2007). Walk the old quarter’s single lane and you’ll find a stone doorway wide enough for a hay cart, leading to a hand-dug bodega where the owner still treads his own tempranillo. Between the two worlds lies the 14th-century stone cross, its base scribbled with scallop-shell graffiti; pilgrims pause, photograph, move on, unaware that the real village lies behind them up a short gravel slope.

Shelter on the meseta

Weather changes fast at this height. Spring can start benign, then horizontal rain lashes across the fairway without warning. In October the cereal stubble turns bronze, the sky rinsed clear, but mist pools in the valley by dawn and visibility drops to ten metres. The golf clubhouse – open every day bar Monday outside winter – becomes the only reliable refuge between Santo Domingo and Redecilla del Camino. Clean loos, free Wi-Fi that actually works, and staff who’ll fill your bottle even if you order nothing. Beer is Estrella Galicia on tap (€2.40), the house wine a young crianza from nearby Baños de Rioja, served in a water glass. If the kitchen’s on, a €8 portion of paella feeds two; if not, toasted baguette with grated tomato and a glug of olive oil costs €2.20 and arrives in under three minutes.

Five things to do if you stay an hour

1. Circle the deserted urbanisation at dusk when stone walls glow pink and the emptiness feels cinematic rather than bleak.
2. Ask at the tiny shop opposite the club toilets for a credencial stamp – they’ll produce a faded pilgrim passport and add the date in biro.
3. Walk 400 m past the driving range to the mirador; the view stretches south across the plain to the Montes de Oca, the camino’s next upland hurdle.
4. Count the different birds of prey: red kite, booted eagle, occasionally a short-toed snake eagle riding the thermals.
5. Play a round. Green fee €35 weekdays, €45 weekends, clubs for hire €20. You might have the course to yourself, save for the shepherd moving his flock across the 12th fairway.

When to come and when to leave

April–mid-June and September–October give long daylight without the furnace of midsummer. Morning walkers reach the village before 11, grab coffee, and press on. Overnighters see a different place: sunset fires the stubble gold, the golf sprinklers hiss, and someone’s uncle wheels out a barbecue beside the albergue. Winter is raw; snow isn’t guaranteed but nor is it rare. The modern apartments have no heating installed, so if the albergue is full your choices are the three-room hotel above the pro-shop (doubles €55, heating extra) or a taxi back downhill to Santo Domingo (€18 fixed fare). July and August are simply hot; start walking at first light and plan to be gone by noon.

Getting here without blisters

Fly Bilbao or Santander with Ryanair or EasyJet from Stansted, Luton, Manchester. ALSA buses reach Santo Domingo de la Calzada in 70 min from Bilbao, 55 min from Santander. From Santo Domingo a local taxi covers the 6 km climb in ten minutes; book at the rank outside the parador. Drivers follow the N-120 Burgos road, exit at kilometre 75, and crest the ridge to find plenty of free parking beside the unused padel courts. There is no filling station, no cash machine, and the only grocery shuttered in 2012. Stock up on water and snacks before you leave the lowlands.

The honest verdict

Ciruena fascinates precisely because it fails. The developers’ dream of a mountain sports city died with the 2008 crash, leaving a monument to speculation that photographers and urban-explorer podcasts now mine for content. Yet the original village survives, smaller, poorer, but stubborn. If you arrive expecting cobbled romance you’ll leave disappointed; if you want to see how modern Spain collided with its own ambition, and fancy a decent coffee beside the 18th green while mulling it over, the detour is worthwhile. Stay the night and you’ll hear nothing but the irrigation pump and, somewhere below, the endless soft tread of boots on the camino’s gravel.