Layer of time · 1950 – present
Villages that emptied
Reservoirs severed the river to floating timber, motor trucks retired the muleteers, and villagers migrated to Madrid, Valencia, or Barcelona. Some hamlets were abandoned completely; others endure with a handful of year-round residents.
A selection of traces related to this era. Dates correspond to the historical layer; a location may have other origins, transformations, and subsequent uses. Contested attributions are noted in their guides.
Stories of this layer
- White earth: kaolin in Alto Tajo
The white sands of Peñalén and Poveda yielded ochre, then open-pit kaolin. Today, European LIFE funding supports restoration of the mined landscape.
- A House to Stay
Village homes open a few weeks a year, miners without rentals in Poveda, and teachers' quarters renovated in El Recuenco: housing in Alto Tajo today.
- The villages that emptied
How Alto Tajo lost almost nine in ten inhabitants in a century, with village-by-village census figures and the stories of abandoned settlements.
- When the village could be heard
Death, alarm and fog signals in Armallones, Checa’s Campanillo, Arbeteta’s Mambrú and Alustante’s clamores.
- Life that returns (and life that disappears)
Deer entering the fields, bearded vultures returning, crayfish and elms disappearing: nature in Alto Tajo has a memory too.
Where its trace endures
Torremochuela
Guadalajara
Valtablado de Beteta: an abandoned village in the Serranía
Beteta
Villanueva de las Tres Fuentes (Orea): an abandoned village in Sierra Molina
Orea
Villaescusa de Palositos: the village almost erased from the map
PeralvecheSetiles iron mines: the other side of Sierra Menera
SetilesThe era on the map
450 million years ago – present
Before us
Before people, the Alto Tajo was a cold sea near the south pole, a forest buried by ash, a plain of red rivers, salt lagoons, and a tropical ocean; later the earth buckled and the Tagus carved through it. Each era left a rock that can still be seen today.
Upper Palaeolithic – Bronze Age
First traces
Before villages there were rock shelters. In the Cueva de los Casares, Upper Palaeolithic hunters engraved horses, stags, and human figures on the cave walls; at the Gallo shelters and Peña Escrita, later peoples left schematic painted signs on the stone.
7th – 1st centuries BC
Celtiberian hillforts
Settlements perched on spurs with defensive ditches, dry-stone ramparts, and fields of chevaux-de-frise stones. El Ceremeño, Peña Moñuz, and Castil de Griegos tell how people lived, defended themselves, and worked iron in Celtiberia before Rome.
1st – 4th centuries AD
Rome in the canyon
A double-tiered aqueduct in Zaorejas, perhaps linked to a mansio on the road between Laminium and Caesaraugusta, and the iron mining galleries of Cueva del Hierro: Rome arrived in the Alto Tajo in search of water, transport routes, and metal.
1129 – 15th century
The frontier and the Señorío
Borderland between Castile and Aragon, the Señorío de Molina was almost an independent kingdom: castles, watchtowers, a Cistercian monastery, and the salt pans of Armallá already recorded in the 12th-century charter of Manrique de Lara.
16th – 19th centuries
Salt, iron and timber
The Crown took control of the salt pans, ironworks drove tilt hammers with river water, and every winter thousands of logs floated down the Tagus toward Aranjuez guided by timbermen.
1860 – 1960
Resin, hooks and pastoral shelters
The century when the mountains sustained everyday life: resin tappers scoring pine trunks, shepherds sheltering under juniper-thatched chozones, lime kilns smoking beside villages. A world that faded within a single generation.
1936 – 1939
The frontline on the river
The canyon formed part of the Civil War frontline: positions atop the cliffs, guarded river crossings, and bunkers. The memory of the war also encompasses the Molina guerrillas, forestry labor, and local families. The Upper Tajuña valley traces this history on the western flank.
1950 – present
Villages that emptied
Reservoirs severed the river to floating timber, motor trucks retired the muleteers, and villagers migrated to Madrid, Valencia, or Barcelona. Some hamlets were abandoned completely; others endure with a handful of year-round residents.