Campillos-Sierra

A small, high village

Campillos-Sierra lies in the Serranía Baja, within the Valle del Cabriel Biosphere Reserve. It is a small, cold village. Its parish church is Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, and its hermitage Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Altarejos, described by villagers on their blog.

What trades and memory tell

Campillos-Sierra reached 476 inhabitants in the late 19th century. Almost half left in the 1960s and today a few dozen remain: Depopulation.

Junipers and an old road

The Dehesa de Campillos-Sierra holds one of Cuenca’s best Spanish-juniper woods, alongside those of Palancares and Tierra Muerta: junipers providing pasture on cold, poor land, always linked to mountain livestock farming. The cart road from Salvacañete to Cuenca passed through the village, and Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn and Herbert Matthews probably rode along it in September 1937 after spending the night in Salvacañete.

At carnival, wheat, beans, pigs’ trotters, eggs and potatoes were collected from houses for the souls in purgatory and then auctioned in the square. It is told in Carnival for the ánimas and San Juan night.

The municipality has a named juniper, the Sabina Portera.

Coal in Cerro de Enmedio

In March 1854 the mining company La Oriental was founded to extract coal from Cerro de Enmedio de Altarejos, in the municipality of Campillos-Sierra. The mine was registered as La Reparadora.

Plan your visit

It can be seen in half an hour.

Before you travel

Ask the town council when the church and hermitage open. Frost is frequent in winter.

Combine with

Valdemoro-Sierra is about 6 km away as the crow flies and Huerta del Marquesado about 7.