La Frontera

A village on the frontier

La Frontera lies in Serranía Media (middle Serranía), in the Campichuelo district. Its name comes from its position in the 11th century, between the lands Álvar Fáñez won for Alfonso VI and those still in Muslim hands. It is less cold than the high mountains.

The church of San Andrés Apóstol retains a transitional Romanesque doorway from the 12th century, with a barely pointed arch. The present church is Baroque, dating from 1656 and last rebuilt in 1747: a single tall nave, a bell gable with two bells and, above the chancel, a hemispherical dome with Baroque ribs and paintings of St Peter, St Andrew, St John and St Mark.

What trades and memory tell

The Cristo de San Isidro was built in the 1950s: a very tall pyramidal tower housing an image of the farming saint in a small hermitage. The village also has the Nuestra Señora de Belén hermitage.

The reservoir that was never built

In the early 20th century, La Frontera almost acquired a reservoir on its doorstep. The canals and reservoirs plan of 1900 included the Portillo reservoir, with a 51-metre dam in the Priego narrows, fed solely by the Escabas, to irrigate the Tagus floodplains between Estremera and Talavera. A royal order in 1903 opened the scheme to public consultation. It would have flooded 865 hectares, almost all of Cañamares and the La Frontera valley as far as the foot of the village, and cut across the Beteta royal drove road. The engineer who studied it himself feared leaks: around La Frontera the ground is gypsum, full of torcas, collapse sinkholes, such as El Recuenco, which villagers regard as the sinkhole that drains the rainwater. On 15 March 1927, the Noguerilla torca suddenly opened up, and the newspapers reported it. The reservoir was never built.

The old road from Cuenca to Molina de Aragón through Mariana, Sotos and Campichuelo passed through La Frontera. In 1878 the Provincial Council required La Frontera, Albalate, Cañamares and Cañizares to repair the road that the owner of the Solán de Cabras spa had opened at his own expense to bring bathers there.

Plan your visit

Allow an hour for the church, the hermitage and the Cristo.

Before you travel

Ask the town hall or parish when the church opens.

Combine with

Cañamares is 6 km away in a straight line and Fresneda de la Sierra 6.5 km.