La Cierva

A hillside village beside Tierra Muerta

La Cierva lies in the Serranía Media, about 50 km from Cuenca, on a slope between two river plains and near Tierra Muerta. The municipality lies within the Palancares y Tierra Muerta Natural Monument and Valle del Cabriel Biosphere Reserve. It is a cold village.

Las Hoyas

Within the municipality is Las Hoyas, one of the most important places for studying the Early Cretaceous. About 125 million years ago it was a subtropical freshwater wetland, and its fossils preserve exceptional detail: birds, small dinosaurs, some of the earliest flowering plants. It has been a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain’s highest heritage listing), as a Palaeontological Zone, since 2016.

It keeps producing news. In 2026 Gorgonavis alcyone was described, a bird known from an incomplete skull: the first adult bird skull remains of that age found in Europe. Las Hoyas fossils can be seen at the Museo de Paleontología de Castilla-La Mancha in Cuenca.

What trades and memory tell

A woman stockbreeder from La Cierva told Vestal Etnografía how the trade continued in her family and how the village went from several sheep flocks to her alone. Sheep were the basis of the mountain economy; their retreat forms part of Depopulation.

The road to the village ends there. Hence in August 1993 a German couple, a geologist and a teacher planning excursions round the Cañada del Hoyo lakes, came to see what lay at the road’s end. They arrived during festivities, villagers welcomed them and they returned each year; on retirement they stayed. In 2023 she was elected mayor of a village of 25 inhabitants, all over twenty, seeking a year-round bar and homes for young people. With tools found in the half-ruined house they bought and later donations, they opened a Museo de Usos y Costumbres in 2023: pack saddles and carrying frames, yokes and hames, threshing-floor shovels, wooden reaping finger guards, esparto tools, a well-used slaughtering bench, honey jars, grain measures and a bedchamber with bed, cradle and chest. Some women recognise utensils they used as girls.

Jasper for the cathedral and pines for the Navy

The municipality has about three jasper quarries, yellow and violet, with cut blocks left uncollected. This jasper was used in Cuenca cathedral in Ventura Rodríguez’s work, at the high altar and San Julián’s transparente, a light-admitting altarpiece structure; raw it looks grey, acquiring colour only when cut and polished, formerly in a cloister workshop. In the 18th century the best pines were marked in the king’s name for the Navy, for masts, rigging spars and deck beams, and went down the Cabriel towards the Mediterranean. The village historian links a consignment to the warship San Justo, present at Trafalgar. Another trade remained for the village: charcoal, sold in Cuenca.

An old boundary lawsuit held at the Real Chancillería de Granada recounts the village’s name: two men returning from Cuenca said the first settlers, colonists fleeing a bad lord, asked Cuenca council’s permission to settle and gave it a hind. This is tradition recorded in a lawsuit, not proof of the name’s origin.

Routes

The PR-CU 21 short-distance trail leads to Fuente de Marimingo: 8 km and about two hours. It opened in 2026.

Plan your visit

Start at the museum in Cuenca to see the fossils. Then the village and PR-CU 21.

Before you travel

Las Hoyas is a protected site: entry is only on visits organised by the regional government, and no fossils or stones may be collected.

Combine with

Valdemorillo de la Sierra is 6.3 km away as the crow flies and Valdemoro-Sierra 8.8.