Casas de Garcimolina

A very small, very high village

Casas de Garcimolina lies in the Serranía Baja, beside Algarra, at the eastern end of the province. It is a cold village with a large, almost empty municipality.

What trades and memory tell

The municipality’s quarries supplied lajas, flat limestone slabs for houses and pens. Extracting them disturbed layers of an Early Cretaceous lake, revealing fish, plants and a crocodile tooth.

In 2024 the Chikuto project of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid began studying them, with the Mujeres del Sabinarejo and Las Cunázaras associations, town councils and the Museo de Paleontología de Castilla-La Mancha. It is named after José Luis Ortiz Villar, a collaborator on Cuenca excavations. There was a village exhibition, and the best pieces went to the museum.

García Molina’s house

The village arose during resettlement of Moya’s lands in the early 13th century, when a certain García Molina settled here and his house named the place: in the 18th century it was still called La Casa de Garcimolina. In 1608 a local man, Pedro de Espina, enrolled to study Arts at the University of Oviedo. In the Ensenada Cadastre of 1752 it had 36 households, between 144 and 180 people, and the inquiry was held in Algarra’s rectory, home of its priest, a Trinitarian from Royuela in Aragon. Garcimolina and Algarra also shared timber from the dehesa boyal (common ox pasture) and a single-stone flour mill on their boundary, leased in 1752 by an Ademuz resident for 23 fanegas of wheat and 330 reales a year, shared equally by the two councils. The village has had its own municipal seal since 1847.

The Barranco del Lobo drove road

The Vereda de las Monjas, a narrower drove road 25 Castilian varas, 20.89 metres, wide, crosses the municipality, descending from the mountains towards Moya and the south; its name is attributed to Moya’s Conceptionist nuns, who owned land nearby. Crossing Garcimolina it changes name to the Vereda del Barranco del Lobo. Beside it remain dry-stone shepherds’ shelters named after villagers: Tío Román, Tío Bruno and Tío Bernardino.

Festivities honour San Juan, and villagers have gathered their proverbs, skittles game, May-song lyrics, wind names and a dictionary of local «palabros y jerigonzas» (odd words and jargon) in Garcimolina y sus cosas.

Plan your visit

A short stop together with Algarra. The quarries are unprepared for visitors and nothing is to be collected.

Before you travel

Frost is frequent from autumn to spring. Ask the town council whether the exhibition is open.