Garaballa

A large municipality in the east

Garaballa lies in the Serranía Baja, on the province’s eastern edge, within the Valle del Cabriel Biosphere Reserve. Its municipality, about 72 km², borders Narboneta, Talayuelas, Mira, Aliaguilla, Henarejos and Landete.

Tejeda: a yew, a caiman and a paper mill

Garaballa municipality contains the valley of Tejeda la Vieja, where, according to tradition, the Virgin appeared to a shepherd, Juan, in a yew. Yews gave it its name: «el llamarse Tejeda es por los tejos que allí cerca estaban» (it is called Tejeda for the yews that stood nearby), wrote Friar Ponce de León in 1663. Even then only three remained at the cave’s foot, and devotees took branches as relics; in 1995 one remained, clinging to the castle rocks above a river bend. The valley still shows the Arab castle ruins, the Cueva Santa, the first place of worship, and the site of the first convent, where Pedro de Bobadilla, eldest son of the Marquises of Moya, was buried. The image is now in the Tejeda monastery and every seven years goes up to Moya in procession: the Septenario.

The Trinitarian friars of the new convent built a paper mill in the valley, operating from December 1756. It made estraza, estrazilla and florete papers, sold in Castile and Valencia, each sheet showing the Trinitarian Order’s cross against the light, the same cross carved on the cloister vaults. The sale of confiscated property put it up for auction, and its ruins remain.

A stuffed caiman, the «hardacho de Tejeda» (Tejeda lizard), hung in the sanctuary, watched fearfully by children at pilgrimages. According to the tradition recorded by Friar Ponce, a Moya soldier, Juan Montero, brought it from Peru: encountering it in the countryside with only a sword, he fought it for five hours commending himself to the Virgen de Tejeda, killed, skinned and salted it. It disappeared during the Civil War in 1936. Hardacho, the word for lizard in Moya’s lands, comes from Arabic.

What trades and memory tell

In the 19th century, when concessions were liberalised, the Serranía Baja filled with mines and trial pits. Garaballa had the Santa Filomena mine, silver-bearing grey copper belonging to a Cuenca company. In 1867 it had traces of old workings and had been idle for a year.

Small Iberian settlements with hardly any wall remains have been identified by surface survey on the municipality’s slopes: La Veguilla, with slag; Las Ramblas I and II; Peña el Rubial; El Hornillo and Rento de Henares, with flint and metal slag. None has been excavated. The Cerro Viejo entry gathers them with the rest of the basin.

Plan your visit

Garaballa is a stop on a day through the eastern Serranía Baja.

Before you travel

Old mines have shafts and galleries: do not enter. The settlements are in the hills, unprepared for visitors.

Combine with

Talayuelas, with its lake and mines, is 8.8 km away as the crow flies, and Aliaguilla 9.3.