Memory · the thread of the atlas
The Serranía, told through what was lived in it
30 stories arranged by era, from the Cretaceous limestone to today. They name the people, the dates and the sources.
To begin
A guided tour through the eras →Mesozoic – today
Geology and dinosaurs
The dissolving of Mesozoic limestone shaped torcas, lakes and the Ciudad Encantada in the Serranía, a karst landscape to which the IGME, the Spanish Geological Survey, assigns 20 km².
- Water against limestone: how the Serranía was formedFrom the Cretaceous lakes of Las Hoyas and rivers of Lo Hueco to the Ciudad Encantada, sinkholes, the Cuervo's tufa and the sediments of La Parra.
- Las Hoyas, from a wall to a fossil siteHow slabs with fish in a house façade led to the Las Hoyas fossil site, and how it is excavated each summer: layers, coprolites, tracks and students.
Palaeolithic – Bronze Age
First marks and rock art
In Villar del Humo the regional government counts 31 painted sites with Levantine and schematic art, roughly between 8,000 and 3,500 years old.
7th – 1st centuries BC
Iberians and Celtiberians
The Iron Age left hillforts, settlements and cemeteries in the Serranía.
1st – 4th centuries
Rome and lapis specularis
Valeria was founded between 93 and 82 BC, and the villa of Noheda, from between the 1st century BC and the 6th century AD, keeps a figurative mosaic of 231.62 m².
8th – 15th centuries
Frontier, charters and castles
Alfonso VIII resettled Moya and gave it a town charter in 1210, according to Chamocho.
16th – 18th centuries
Towns, lords and the Mesta
Between the 16th and 18th centuries the villages of the Land of Cuenca became chartered towns one by one.
- Buying themselvesThe Serranía from the 16th to 18th centuries: villages buying their own courts, lords, wool, paper and iron, travellers to Peru and China and the 1752 Cadastre.
- Everyone's woodlandWoodland ownership in the Serranía: Cuenca's hills, the king's pines, grazing disputes and villages that bought or lost their woods.
16th – 20th centuries
The trades of the forest and the water
For centuries the trades of the Serranía came from the pine forest, the livestock and the water.
- El Salto de Villalba: a hundred years of light on the JúcarHow the Salto de Villalba hydroelectric station was built, life in its workers' settlement and why it gradually emptied, told by those who lived there.
- The gancheros of the Escabas and the GuadielaHow timber was driven down the tributaries of the Tagus in the Serranía de Cuenca, from Priego to Cañizares, and what remains of the ganchero's trade.
- Shepherds of the Serranía: from shepherd boy to the last drove roadShepherds' lives: hiring at San Pedro, walking to Jaén, huts, trained rams and the Pleiades, and transhumance continuing in 2023.
- Resin, pitch and charcoal: what the hills gave to the fireHow pines were tapped in the Serranía, who did each job, where the resin went and how pitch and charcoal were produced in the woods.
- Plants with names: the ethnobotany of the SerraníaTorvisco, morquera, cuajaleches, brooms and thistles: how the Serranía used plants for food, healing, beliefs, sweeping and weaving, in studies and memory.
- The salt of the Serranía: from royal privilege to the last saltworksThe brine saltworks of the Serranía de Cuenca, from Alfonso X's privileges to Salinas del Manzano and Valsalobre: wells, waterwheels, pans and salt for livestock.
- The Valsalobre saltworksHow salt was extracted in Valsalobre, why shepherds and pig slaughters across much of the Serranía needed it, and why the last harvest was in 1982.
- The dehesa and livestock of ValsalobreThe enclosed dehesa for mules and cattle, the village mule keeper and cowherd, the enclosure celebration and the flocks that wintered in Andalusia.
- The hills provide a living: resin, firewood, lavender and asphodelsHow Valsalobre lived from its pine forests: five resin tappers, firewood allocated by lot, lavender distilled in a boiler and asphodels for pigs.
19th century
Carlists, Madoz and disentailment
Madoz's Dictionary gives figures from the mid-19th century: in 1847 Huélamo had 120 houses and 469 souls, with half the municipality cultivated and the other half covered with timber pines.
- The Serranía Baja mining rushIn the 19th century, copper and iron in Talayuelas and Garaballa attracted Cuenca's bourgeoisie, miners from Cartagena and an English company.
- Carnival for the ánimas and San Juan nightCarnivals in the villages of the Marquesado de Moya before the war, with collections for souls in purgatory, and the rites and legends of San Juan.
1936 – 1950s
War, maquis and post-war
The Agrupación Guerrillera de Levante operated in the Serranía.
- The Misiones Pedagógicas in the Serranía AltaIn 1932 and 1934 the Republic's Misiones Pedagógicas brought cinema, records and libraries to Beteta and its villages; María Zambrano joined the first.
- The guerrilla in the Serranía de CuencaThe AGLA in the Serranía de Cuenca: the villages it seized, the camps that were raided and the graves opened in 2006.
- Flight 42: Collado Bajo, 29 April 1959The Iberia DC-3 that crashed in the Sierra de Valdemeca in 1959 carrying gymnast Joaquín Blume, the villagers' rescue effort and the Marcha Blume.
- May songs, conscripts and dancing in ValsalobreDancing in El Solano, May songs auctioned for wine, conscripts singing on their way to Cañizares, the Judas pine and winter bonfires, as villagers recall.
- Bread, water, clothes and pig slaughter in ValsalobreThe communal oven, water jug, washing in the river, festival dress, pig slaughter and barter with Priego, as remembered by villagers from Valsalobre.
Villages with memories of the war: Arcos de la Sierra · Fuertescusa · Huélamo · Landete · Pajaroncillo · San Martín de Boniches · Santa Cruz de Moya
1950s – today
The emptying
The INE records 2,605 registered inhabitants for Mira in 1950 and 937 in 2021, with the caveat that the municipality took in Narboneta between 1857 and the census before 1930.
- Studying in Landete: grants, a residence and three hundred studentsHow Landete gained secondary education in the late 1950s, built the Colegio Menor Andrés de Cabrera and came to have three hundred students from elsewhere.
- The hearth, school and the road to ValenciaLife in Tragacete and Vega del Codorno in the 20th century: home and hearth, games, school, pig slaughter, war and leaving for domestic service.
- When the telephone, electricity and running water reached ValsalobreSeparate schools for boys and girls, the switchboard telephone, the first light bulb, the road built with pick and shovel and the exodus from Valsalobre.
21st century
Today
In the 21st century the Serranía de Cuenca is a land with very few people and a great deal of protection.
- The Serranía in the 21st centuryThe Serranía de Cuenca today: 75% fewer people than in 1950, the Natural Park and Biosphere Reserve, new excavations and memory set in stone.
- The Mira flood: a night of water and a year of building workHow Mira lived through the Ojos de Moya flood in October 2024: evacuating older residents, the night in the attics, the mud and a year of building work.
- Trees with names in the SerraníaNamed trees in the Serranía de Cuenca: pines and junipers spared from felling, the Dios de Pajares and the dead elm of Santa María del Val.
The layers on the map
Tap an era to colour its placesMesozoic – today
Geology and dinosaurs
The dissolving of Mesozoic limestone shaped torcas, lakes and the Ciudad Encantada in the Serranía, a karst landscape to which the IGME, the Spanish Geological Survey, assigns 20 km².
Palaeolithic – Bronze Age
First marks and rock art
In Villar del Humo the regional government counts 31 painted sites with Levantine and schematic art, roughly between 8,000 and 3,500 years old; their rock shelters are part of the serial rock-art property that UNESCO inscribed in 1998.
7th – 1st centuries BC
Iberians and Celtiberians
The Iron Age left hillforts, settlements and cemeteries in the Serranía.
1st – 4th centuries
Rome and lapis specularis
Valeria was founded between 93 and 82 BC, and the villa of Noheda, from between the 1st century BC and the 6th century AD, keeps a figurative mosaic of 231.62 m²; both are in municipalities bordering the Serranía.
8th – 15th centuries
Frontier, charters and castles
Alfonso VIII resettled Moya and gave it a town charter in 1210, according to Chamocho; the charter does not survive and is known from a 1625 letter by the castle warden Baltasar Cavallón.
16th – 18th centuries
Towns, lords and the Mesta
Between the 16th and 18th centuries the villages of the Land of Cuenca became chartered towns one by one. Villalba de la Sierra broke away from the city in 1510, Fuentes received the title of villa in 1557 and Cañizares paid 2,280,000 maravedíes between 1582 and 1583 for its own jurisdiction. Other villages had a lord: in 1752 Huélamo paid the Count of Salvatierra twenty-four trout pies a year.
16th – 20th centuries
The trades of the forest and the water
For centuries the trades of the Serranía came from the pine forest, the livestock and the water.
19th century
Carlists, Madoz and disentailment
Madoz's Dictionary gives figures from the mid-19th century: in 1847 Huélamo had 120 houses and 469 souls, with half the municipality cultivated and the other half covered with timber pines; Mira, in 1848, had 384 houses and 1,519 souls, in a stony municipality of poor yield.
1936 – 1950s
War, maquis and post-war
The Agrupación Guerrillera de Levante operated in the Serranía; from November 1947 it was called the Agrupación Guerrillera de Levante y Aragón (AGLA), according to the Democratic Memory project of the UCLM.
1950s – today
The emptying
The INE records 2,605 registered inhabitants for Mira in 1950 and 937 in 2021, with the caveat that the municipality took in Narboneta between 1857 and the census before 1930.
21st century
Today
In the 21st century the Serranía de Cuenca is a land with very few people and a great deal of protection. The Natural Park was designated in 2007 by Law 5/2007, with 73,726 hectares, and in 2019 UNESCO designated the Valle del Cabriel Biosphere Reserve, with 421,765.93 hectares according to the BOE. In 2021 the regional government listed the Gancheros del Alto Tajo as a Bien de Interés Cultural.
How this memory is written
The stories start from public sources (archives, publications, official bodies) and from recorded oral testimony, which is cited as such. Each story gathers its sources at the end and distinguishes source consulted, reference located and open question.