5 days ago
Spain's least touristy town has a new stay — go before everyone else
Not all of Spain is sizzling in a heatwave. My high-summer visit to the small town of Molina de Aragon, between Madrid and Zaragoza in the province of Guadalajara, is positively temperate — in the high 20s during the day and with cooler nights. It's part of Spain's so-called ice triangle, which also includes the towns of Teruel and Calamocha. All sit at an average altitude of 1,000m and are known for cold winters and moderate summers.
There's plenty more to recommend Molina too. The centuries-old town is full of history and has a brand new parador. The 99th in Spain's chain of state-run hotels opened in May and is unusual in that, rather than being in a historic building, it offers panoramic views of one: Molina's splendid 12th-century castillo, which lies opposite, across the steep Gallo its hillside castle, extensive old town and pretty Romanesque bridge, it must be one of Spain's least-touristy towns: there's one bar — La Granja on Plaza San Pedro — and a few shops selling overalls or ironmongery to locals. That's it; not a souvenir or overpriced cocktail in sight.
Thanks probably to the low visitor numbers, my husband and I find that everyone — from customers in that low-key bar to the woman in the castle ticket office — is pleased to see us, interested to know where we're from and keen to help out when our poor Spanish lets us down.
The ethos of the paradors has three main aims: to bring historic buildings back to life, give poorer areas an economic boost and showcase the 'other' Spain, away from beach resorts and well-known cities. Molina's new-build addition, designed by the Colombian-born architect Andres Perea Ortega, was conceived in response to devastating wildfires in the area in 2005 in which 11 people died and 13,000 hectares of forest were destroyed.
It has taken 20 years to come to fruition, but today the hotel's clean modern lines curve round Molina's western side like a protective arm. It's built of local stone and the architects' favourite 'weathering steel' with a protective rust-like patina in warm dark brown. The east side is mostly glass, for those castle views, and the grounds are planted with rosemary, lavender and cypress trees.
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The interior is equally modern, with brilliantly curated artworks — paintings plus ceramic, metal and glass sculptures — and fairly frigid air con. Our room has a balcony overlooking the castle, a sleek stone-and-glass bathroom and the biggest bed we have slept in, a good seven feet across.
Our fellow guests — we are the only foreigners — are mostly couples, although there are some grandparents with school-age grandkids. The food in the restaurant, which is also open to non-residents, is very good. A set dinner accompanied by live music (Tuesdays and Sundays) offers delicious jamon iberico, mango gazpacho with smoked eel, cod Bilbao-style (with garlic, vinegar and mild chilli) and margarita sorbet served with a straw.
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Over dinner, as darkness falls, the castle and the older Torre de Aragon watchtower above it is beautifully illuminated. The next morning we head over the river and up through the old town for a closer look. With its square, flag-topped towers and miles of battlements, the castle looks like the model for every toy fort ever made (entry £4). It comes as no surprise that El Cid was based here for a time.
The vast site, which we share with just five other people, is wonderfully unmanicured, with long grass and straggly wildflowers covering the steeply rising ground inside the perimeter walls. Skylarks are singing their hearts out as we toil up the slope toward the walled plaza de armas (parade ground), four of whose original eight towers still stand. This area alone is in itself as big as many UK castles.
We walk round as many of the battlements as possible, until I scare myself half to death scrambling down the pitch-dark steep and crumbly steps of one of the towers. English Heritage health and safety officials would have a fit at all the cracked stones, missing banisters and general dilapidation, but on the whole we enjoy the absence of 'mind your head' and 'danger steep drop' signs.
The town and castle aside, nature lovers can easily fill days in Molina exploring the nearby Unesco-listed Molina-Alto Tajo Geopark, with its cliffs, canyons and jaw-dropping rock formations of the kind you would expect in Arizona or Utah. Here the Iberian peninsula's mighty Tagus River (which empties into the Atlantic from Lisbon, 600 miles away) is in its infancy, flowing clear through a network of wooded gorges.
We drive a few minutes west from Molina and a wall of bulbous red sandstone pinnacles soon rears up, some with young trees perched on their tops. We meet the local geologist and guide José Antonio Martínez Perruca by the Virgen de la Hoz church, which sits at the bottom of one such formation, and start to climb the twisting rocky trail behind. Soon we're in the midst of the towers, peering into chasms and eyeballing the small mountain goats that browse almost-vertical rock faces for tasty lumps of moss. A griffon vulture, here from north Africa for the breeding season, is riding the thermals high above.
Martínez tells us this geology was formed not by the action of the Tagus and its tributaries but 200 million years ago, in the Triassic period, when the supercontinent of Pangea was breaking up into Africa, the Americas and Europe.
It's a perfect day, with cool breezes and bright sun, as we wander back down the steep slopes, yet we see not another soul. Martínez would love the area to find a larger audience. 'Our problem,' he says, 'is that people driving up from Madrid, across Spain's central plateau, have no idea these natural treasures exist.'
The next day we motor half an hour south to the village of Chequilla, stopping on the way at a thrilling viewpoint over the Cabrillas gorge. Tiny Chequilla, population 14, seems to be on friendly terms with all this striking geology; its houses, garages and church huddle beneath the sandstone monoliths as if they are so many benevolent guardians.
We are puzzled by signs to a plaza de toros — surely this place is too small to have its own bullring — but discover as we walk that this is a natural arena in the middle of Chequilla's ciudad encantada, an 'enchanted city' of rocky outcrops, clefts and towers on the village's southern edge. In August the space is used for an annual bull run, part of the Santo Cristo de la Fortaleza festival. Photographs show spectators watching from the flat tops of surrounding rock formations. Today, though, it is quiet; ours is the only car in the village car park, and the sole bar is firmly closed.
On the way back to Madrid, we spend a night at a more classic parador, in the slightly larger town of Sigüenza. It's housed in a castle that was converted into a bishop's palace in the 12th century and has been operating as a parador since 1976. There are British voices in the breakfast room (formerly the bishop's throne room) and even a handful of artisanal gift shops near the surprisingly large cathedral.
It's comfortable, palatial (naturally) and its chef offers a delicious seven-course tasting menu, but we're glad to have had a taste of less-trodden Spain in ancient Molina's very cool new parador.
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Liz Boulter was a guest of Parador de Molina de Aragon, which has B&B doubles from £140 ( Fly to Madrid
