Henarejos

A village of the Land of Moya

Henarejos lies at the eastern end of the province, in the Serranía Baja (lower Serranía), within the Valle del Cabriel Biosphere Reserve. It was part of the old Land of Moya. The terrain is rolling pine forest and ravines, with stone houses and narrow streets following the ground.

Paintings in the shelters

The municipality’s ravines hold rock paintings, protected as a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain’s highest heritage listing).

• Abrigo del Tío Modesto, with Levantine art and a panel of superimposed prehistoric phases. A signposted route starts in the village.
• Abrigo de los Oculados, named for its large-eyed idols. In 2012 the mineral crust covering three figures was dated, and the dates fit the expected period for this kind of idol.
• Others grouped as Henarejos rock art shelters.

The mining valley

Henarejos lived from coal. Mines began working with simple methods in the mid-19th century, and in 1860 the Sociedad Carbonera de Cuenca was formed in Madrid, dreaming of a railway from Aranjuez; in 1868 a company to lay track to the mines was even approved. It never happened. Meanwhile coal travelled by pack animal to La Roda station, 85 kilometres away, and later by carts and lorries to Enguídanos station once the Utiel-Cuenca railway opened. Its peak came in the first two decades of the 20th century, when coal fuelled locomotives, and the post-war years, when the country needed domestic coal.

Then three neighbourhoods grew in the Valle de las Minas, De Abajo, De Arriba and Nuevo, with over 300 permanent residents, mainly young families from nearby villages but also Andalusians and Asturians. There was a school, company shop, oven, bars, washhouse and Guardia Civil barracks. Almost the whole village lived from mining. With oil, from the 1960s coal ceased to pay, the installation was precarious and nobody modernised it: in 1966 the mines closed.

Another version, from a 2023 radio excursion, changes some dates and figures: it puts the start of bituminous coal for steam engines in the late 19th century, speaks of over seven hundred inhabitants in the settlement, says it emptied in the early 1990s and adds new work in 2013 and 2014, denounced by SOS Patrimonio Conquense for destroying part of what remained. It also repeats that Romans extracted silver from the valley, without citing evidence. The versions may concern different things (mine closure, people remaining, later work), but documentation is missing. Today the valley mixes black and grey spoil heaps with red sandstone, maritime pines and coal-washing ponds; the ruins and galleries are not visited.

In 1988 a Henarejos woman told lecturer Pilar Gómez Couso Pedro el valiente, the tale of a woodcutters’ son leaving to discover the world. Her recording forms part of the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha corpus of children’s popular literature, and the author remembered it for the richness of its characters and episodes.

Plan your visit

Walk through the village and ask the town council how to reach the shelters.

Before you travel

View the paintings without touching or wetting the rock, using flash or stepping on the shelter floor: any contact damages them.

Combine with

Fuentelespino de Moya is 6.3 km away as the crow flies and San Martín de Boniches 7.9. The paintings of Villar del Humo complete the day.