Fuertescusa

A village in the Escabas canyons

Fuertescusa lies in the Serranía Alta, among the Escabas canyons: limestone cliffs and pine forests surround a small village with the church of San Martín Obispo. It arose from resettlement following Cuenca’s conquest in the 12th century, and its name suggests a defensive role.

The approach from Cañamares follows the Escabas upstream along a road changing banks between river and crags, with vultures on the cliffs. At the narrowest point, the Puerta del Infierno, three tunnels had to be cut through rock for it to pass. When and by whom they were bored is not known here. On arrival the valley opens into poplar groves and vegetable gardens, and houses hang from the slope. San Martín church mixes work of several periods, with 15th-century elements and an 18th-century alteration: a barrel-vaulted nave, coffered ceiling at the east end, chapels between buttresses, dressed-stone doorway and Renaissance wooden porch. The village has a six-spouted spring.

It is tufa country too. In 2021 an inventory of provincial tufa systems published in the regional government’s environmental magazine found the highest densities by area in Fuertescusa and the Escabas basin. The authors propose studying areas of interest there for tufa-forming mosses.

What trades and memory tell

Logs driven by the gancheros, river timber drivers, came down the Escabas to the Guadiela and Tagus: The gancheros of the Escabas and Guadiela.

In 2006 Eusebio García, «Domingo», an AGLA guerrilla killed around December 1948, was exhumed in the civil cemetery; sources disagree on the date and circumstances of his death. This is the grave of Eusebio García, described with others in The guerrilla in the Serranía.

Within the municipality is Fuente de las Carboneras, restored by the Esparvel nature association: the name recalls charcoal burners working in the hills, piling thick wood in the centre and thin outside, then covering it with branches and earth to burn with little air.

Routes

• PR-CU 114 (short-distance trail), Cucurucho y Hocecilla: 12 km. It climbs without respite along a narrow path beneath trees to El Cucurucho, the best viewpoint over the Escabas. It descends to the river by Puente de las Labrás, follows it upstream and returns along La Hocecilla path among cliffs.
• PR-CU 115, Sendero de la Dehesa: 18.5 km.
• SL-CU 12, Sendero del Hocino: 2.2 km, the shortest.
• SL-CU 13, Sendero del Cañizar: 6 km.

Everyone’s woodland

Pine forest has always sustained Fuertescusa. In 1591, to pay for the church tower, the council proposed auctioning six thousand pines from its woods. In the late 19th century the woodland, 5,396 hectares, was divided on paper into equal lots among villagers without boundary markers, and income was shared annually by category: a full share for married people and widowed people with children, half for married people without children and a quarter for unmarried people and widowed people alone.

On the night of 20 January 1948, with the Guardia Civil in the square, heads of household gathered at the town hall to sign a deed making the woodland the property of 125 villagers and their heirs. Only 18 owners were women. For Mariano Rueda Juan, who told it in Mansiegona, the signature ended common use dating from resettlement; with emigration, pine-forest income left year after year with the heirs. In 1978, under democracy, several villagers took the case to the Senate Petitions Committee. The history of the Serranía’s common woods is told in Everyone’s woodland.

Plan your visit

Start with the SL-CU 12 local trail to see the canyon; leave El Cucurucho for a full day.

Before you travel

The climb to El Cucurucho is continuous and very steep at the end. Cliff paths may be wet or icy.

Combine with

Cañizares is 5 km away as the crow flies and Cañamares 6.