Valsalobre

A village in Serranía Alta

Valsalobre lies in Serranía Alta (upper Serranía), near Beteta. It has two neighbourhoods, El Solano to the north and El Muladar to the south, and its patron is Santiago. Its municipality contains the Serrezuela de Valsalobre, a natural monument since 2003.

What trades and memory tell

Valsalobre’s memory comes from conversations Vestal Etnografía recorded with residents. Each subject has its own story:

• The saltworks of Valsalobre: salt from a well, sold to district livestock keepers until 1982.
• The communal pasture and livestock: cattle and mules on the pasture, the mule keeper and flocks wintering in Andalucía.
• The woodland provides a living: resin, firewood allocated by lot, lavender and asphodels.
• May songs, conscripts and dancing: festivities, dancing in El Solano and the Judas pine.
• Bread, water, laundry and pig slaughter: the post-war home.
• When the telephone, electricity and running water arrived: school, the road and people leaving.

One resident remembers around five hundred inhabitants and eighty to a hundred occupied houses; the censuses never exceed 334.

In April 2022 a marteloscope was presented in the Dehesa Boyal: a hectare of woodland with every tree numbered, located and measured, including black pines, Scots pines and centuries-old Portuguese oaks. It teaches tree marking for felling. Software simulates which trees would be cut and the value of their timber and the cavities and bark used by animals, without touching any.

Saltworks that prayed for the king

Valsalobre’s salt has written records from the 13th century in Cuenca cathedral’s archive. On 21 December 1264, Bishop Pedro Lorenzo endowed the maitinada, the canons’ Matins prayers, with saltworks income so that Alfonso X’s soul would be prayed for. In 1328 the chapter exchanged its holdings in the Valsalobre saltworks with García Álvarez de Albornoz and his wife Teresa Gómez for a four-aranzada vineyard in Arquillos, a village of Cuenca. In 1366 the canons again claimed them from the Crown among their privileges, and in 1469 the diocese’s saltworks, Valsalobre among them, passed to Rodrigo de Ulloa, chief accountant of Castile. Beside the saltworks remains a pool where salt is still visible.

Combine with

Beteta is 5 km away, and PR-CU 4 (short-distance trail) reaches the village on foot from Carrascosa through the pastures.