Huérguina

A village born from another

Huérguina lies in the Serranía Baja, 3.5 km from Cañete, within the Valle del Cabriel Biosphere Reserve. It belonged to Cañete until separating as its own municipality in 1843. It is a cold mountain village.

Granary, prison and town hall

Madoz dates the separation to 1843: Huérguina, formerly a neighbourhood of Cañete, gained its own jurisdiction by government order. In 1847 the pósito, the village grain store, served as prison and town hall too. The school had twenty children and the teacher received only what their parents paid.

In 1892, when the State was selling village woods, Dehesa Horguinilla was among those excepted as public land: 107 municipal hectares, almost 64 marked as doubtful or expansion area.

What the stones tell

The village’s name appears in geology books: the Calizas de La Huérguina Formation is the Early Cretaceous layer, about 127 million years old, containing Las Hoyas. Its thinly laminated limestones are the bottom of a freshwater wetland in a subtropical climate. The site itself is in the municipality of La Cierva.

The Judas effigies

At Holy Week Huérguina retains the Judas effigies: straw-filled rag figures shaken about on Easter Sunday and finally burnt. It is a tradition in many Serranía Baja villages, each with its own form: in Salvacañete they fill them with lavender, in Landete hang signs listing village wrongdoings, in Pajaroncillo Judas «se meaba» (wet himself) through a drinking vessel hidden inside, and in Zafrilla they boast of hanging him from the district’s tallest trunk.

Plan your visit

It takes a short time to see, together with Cañete.

Combine with

Cañete is 3.5 km away as the crow flies; Boniches and Salinas del Manzano, 6 and 7.