Corpa

The church tower appears first, a blunt stone finger pointing skyward from 815 metres up. At this altitude, forty kilometres east of Madrid, the air thins and the city’s roar drops to a murmur. Corpa sits on the lip of the Meseta, high enough that the sunrise arrives five minutes earlier than in the capital and the night sky keeps its stars.

Drive the A-2 past the airport cargo terminals, swing off at M-50, and the metropolitan tide recedes. Wheat fields replace billboards, and the temperature gauge on the dashboard slips three degrees. By the time you reach the village boundary the Sierra is a paper-cut silhouette on the western horizon and the only traffic jam is a tractor turning into a barn.

A grid for grain, not tourists

Corpa’s layout was drafted by farmers, not planners. Three parallel streets run north-south, stitched together by short cross-lanes wide enough for a mule cart. Stone houses sit shoulder-to-shoulder, their wooden gates painted the same ox-blood red used two centuries ago. Number 14 Calle Real still has the iron ring where traders hitched horses; the metal is polished weekly by the owner, who refuses to let it rust.

Population hovers around five hundred, swelling to seven hundred when grandchildren visit at Christmas. There is no hotel, one bar, and a bakery that opens only when the baker’s arthritis allows. Visitors looking for gift shops or interpretive centres will be disappointed; the village’s interpretive centre is the morning queue for coffee at Bar El Pilar, where yesterday’s rainfall, tomorrow’s barley price and the mayor’s gallstones are discussed with equal gravity.

The parish church of San Pedro Apóstol dominates the skyline but not the budget. Built between 1620 and 1693, it lacks the gold-leaf excess of Segovia or the delicate plasterwork of Andalucía. Inside, the cool stone smells of wax and grain dust. Sunday Mass at eleven draws thirty parishioners; the priest doubles the sermon length if strangers appear, eager to show the place is alive.

Walking on the roof of the Henares

Step past the last houses and the ground falls away in every direction. A lattice of agricultural tracks fans out, each one elevated a metre above the surrounding land by centuries of ploughing and wind. In April the plain is a chessboard of green wheat and black fallow; by July the colours reverse, the wheat bleached to pale gold and the fallow baked to terracotta. Walk east for twenty minutes and the only vertical features are telegraph poles and the occasional holm oak, bent permanently inland by the Atlantic weather systems that roll across the plateau.

Elevation keeps summer walks bearable. At 815 m the mercury tops out four degrees cooler than Madrid, and a breeze threads through the cereal stalks. Still, midday in August is a fool’s errand: shade is limited to the lee of a barn or the inside of the tunnel-like junipers that farmers plant as windbreaks. Early starts are rewarded with hen harriers quartering the fields and, if the stubble has recently been burned, black-shouldered kites hunting the ash for roasted grasshoppers.

Rainfall is miserly—barely 400 mm a year—so paths harden to concrete. Trainers suffice; boots are overkill unless you plan a ten-kilometre loop south to the abandoned rail siding at Anchuelo. Carry water: the single fountain on the western edge stopped working during the 2017 drought and has never been repaired.

What arrives on the plate

Food is dictated by the threshing floor, not the menu. Lentils from nearby Pedrezuela arrive stewed with chorizo that was hung in a bedroom chimney for six weeks. Lamb is roasted whole in the bread oven behind the church, the wood smoke flavouring the meat long before it reaches the table. Prices are pre-inflationary: a plate of migas—fried breadcrumbs with grapes and bacon—costs €6 at Bar El Pilar, provided you arrive before the baker’s wife claims the last portion.

Vegetarians survive on tortilla and salad; vegans should bring supplies. The village shop stocks UHT milk, tinned asparagus and little else. Alcalá de Henares, fourteen kilometres away, has supermarkets, but the road back climbs 250 m; ice cream rarely survives the ascent.

Calendar governed by weather and wheat

Late June brings the fiestas of San Pedro. A sound system is bolted to the church tower and a foam party for teenagers occupies the single square. The event feels like a family wedding to which 500 distant cousins have been accidentally invited. outsiders are welcome but will be asked whose cousin they are; answer “de Inglaterra” and someone will produce a second cousin who once au-paired in Colchester.

October is matanza season. Pigs that have roamed the oak groves are slaughtered in backyard sheds, then converted into chorizo, salchichón and morcilla. The process is not curated for tourists; photography is discouraged and visitors who appear squeamish will be handed the hose. If invited, accept: the resulting breakfast of fresh liver sautéed with garlic and bay is the best hangover cure within a fifty-kilometre radius.

Winter sharpens the altitude. Night frosts begin in November and can linger until April. When snow arrives—two or three times a season—the village becomes an island. The communal tractor clears the main street first, then the road to the cemetery, prioritising the dead over the living. British drivers accustomed to gritted motorways should pack chains; a hire-car’s summer tyres spin uselessly on the packed-snow incline out of the valley.

Getting there, getting out

Public transport demands patience. From Madrid-Barajas take the Cercanías C-2 or C-7 to Alcalá de Henares (32 min, €2.40). Monday-to-Friday bus L-12 leaves Alcalá’s Avenida de Guadalajara at 13:15 and 18:30, returning at 07:00 and 14:30. Journey time is 25 minutes; the fare is €1.20, paid in cash to a driver who pretends not to speak English. Saturday service is reduced to a single afternoon run; Sunday is impossible unless you pre-book a taxi (€25 fixed tariff, tel. +34 918 88 00 00).

Driving remains the practical choice. A two-day hire from Barajas starts at €35 if you accept a mystery compact; petrol for the 80 km round trip is under €10. Park on the dirt triangle by the polideportivo; the Guardia Civil occasionally ticket cars left on Calle Real’s narrow verges.

The honest verdict

Corpa will never feature on a regional tourism board poster. It offers no souvenirs beyond what you can pick from the hedgerow: a pocketful of wild thyme, a shard of terracotta roof tile, the memory of a night sky so dark you can read the Milky Way. Come for a morning walk and lunch, stay for sunset if you have a designated driver. Expect nothing monumental and you’ll leave with something better: the realisation that half an hour from Madrid’s orbital motorway life still follows the rhythm of sowing, harvest and the first drops of rain on dusty stone.