Layer of time · 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.
The gancheros drove pine logs down the Escabas, the Guadiela and the other tributaries of the Tagus to Aranjuez, a trade documented from the 16th century that lasted until well into the 1940s and which the regional government listed as a Bien de Interés Cultural in 2021, with Priego, Cañamares, Cañizares, Beteta and Santa María del Val among its villages. On the Júcar, timber went down towards Cuenca, and from 1926 the river also gave electricity: the Salto de Villalba power station, built to supply Madrid.
A selection of traces related to this era. A place may have other origins, later transformations and uses.
Where these data come from
- Acuerdo de 20/04/2021 por el que se declara Bien de Interés Cultural los Gancheros del Alto Tajo (DOCM n.º 80, 28-04-2021) (source consulted)
- elDiario.es, Javier Muñoz de la Torre Granados: «Cien años del Salto de Villalba…» (19-7-2026) (source consulted)
- Vestal Etnografía: «Cien años del Salto de Villalba» (documental, fuente oral) (source consulted)
The stories of this era
- Episode · 1926 – todayEl 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.
- Trade · 16th century – 1940sThe 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.
- Trade · 18th century – 2023Shepherds 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.
- Trade · 19th century – 2022Resin, 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.
- Trade · 20th centuryPlants 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.
- Trade · 1187 – 21st centuryThe 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.
- Trade · Until 1982The 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.
- Trade · Until the 1960sThe 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.
- Trade · Until the 1970sThe 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.
Where its trace remains
Some places do not yet have a verified location: the map colours their municipality.
The era on the map
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.
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.