Life that returns (and life that disappears)

Countryside that filled as the villages emptied

In Checa, farmers in the 1950s and 1960s began noticing something new: the first deer were leaving their mark on the crops. It was no coincidence. As fewer people remained, wild vegetation spread. Fields no longer sown filled with scrub and, across many high plateaux, juniper woods advanced into abandoned farmland. Not everything was a gain: ethnobotanist José Fajardo, who spent ten years studying shepherds’ knowledge in the Serranía de Cuenca, points out that without grazing grasslands become scrub, some plants disappear and even the mushrooms change. The king oyster mushroom, for example, depends on pastures maintained by livestock.

Today deer are part of the landscape, and their rutting calls can be heard in the pine woods every autumn. Iberian ibex have also returned to the cliffs and are recolonising the Park.

Cliffs full of life

The limestone and red sandstone walls are Alto Tajo’s great living heritage. Some years ago, the Park estimated around 600 pairs of griffon vultures, 45 of Egyptian vultures, 18 of golden eagles and 36 of peregrine falcons. The jewel, and the most fragile, is Bonelli’s eagle: in 2020 only three or four pairs remained in the Park, in territories such as Oter, Armallones, Huertahernando and Villar de Cobeta. Successful breeding is a struggle.

The return of the bearded vulture

The bearded vulture is the only bird that feeds mainly on bones. It disappeared from these mountains long ago, but young birds released in Cazorla, Castellón and the Pyrenees wander hundreds of kilometres, and some pass through here. Alto Tajo lies between those three populations, with cliffs suitable for breeding and plenty of wild hoofed mammals. The Park has therefore prepared feeding sites with legs and bones, and resin decoys resembling adult birds.

In July 2020, a female named Kika, released in Cazorla the previous year, was rescued sick and malnourished in Peralejos de las Truchas. After recovering, she was released there again in September. Her transmitter showed that she spent the following months around Peralejos.

What disappeared: crayfish and elms

Native crayfish were once so abundant that they supplemented the incomes of many households. Introduced exotic species brought a fungus that wiped them out of the larger rivers within twenty years. Today they survive in isolated streams. Around 60,000 young crayfish a year are released from the Rillo de Gallo hatchery to establish new populations.

Elms were the trees of village life: they shaded the square, the chapel or the fountain. In 1881 engineer Carlos Castel cited the elms of Ocentejo and La Puerta as examples of exceptionally large trees in the province. A photograph from 1975 still shows an old elm alive in Ocentejo. Soon afterwards, Dutch elm disease killed almost all of them. A few survived. The Amayas elm, at 1,246 metres above sea level and almost four metres in circumference, is listed among Guadalajara’s trees of provincial interest for precisely that reason: it survived the epidemic, while another elm beside it died. In Lebrancón, by contrast, the Olmos de la Soledad, beside the chapel, are now two enormous stumps: ghost trees with a legend of their own.

Shepherd’s tobacco

Around Hundido de Armallones grows one of Spain’s rarest plants: Atropa baetica, an endangered relative of belladonna. In Guadalajara it is known only here, in places around Armallones such as Los Cortes, Fuente de la Osa and Ojos de la Carquima, with a few dozen specimens. In 2011 plants were introduced at Umbría de los Amadores, on the way to Huertapelayo. At Nacimiento del Río Cuervo, a similar planting survived for only three years.

Its popular names, “tabaco gordo” and “tabaco de pastor” — large-leaved tobacco and shepherd’s tobacco — preserve the memory of those who knew it best: shepherds, who traditionally are said to have smoked its leaves. An endangered plant whose name carries an almost vanished occupation is the clearest evidence that in Alto Tajo nature and memory cannot be separated.