Territorial memory
Lands and landscapes
A village is understood best by following its ties: which lands shared its forests, where its roads led, and how people lived from their surroundings.
Enter via a historical land or a landscape. Each path leads to stories, villages, and atlas locations. You can cross them: shared histories and resources connect one area to the next.
How the land was organised
Molina, Cuenca and Medinaceli
The sexmas, common grazing lands, and ancient jurisdictions reveal the territory before modern boundaries. Follow their traces in traditional labor and village life.
Historic lands of Cuenca
El Recuenco and Villanueva de Alcorón belonged to Cuenca until the 19th century: pine forests, glassworks and a border drawn by the Tagus.
Follow its memory →Historical landLand and Ducado of Medinaceli
Ciruelos, Anguita, Riba de Saelices, Maranchón and Ablanque: salt works, pine woods, and trading trails of the Tierra de Medinaceli.
Follow its memory →Historical landMolina and its sexmas
Campo, Pedregal, Sabinar, and Sierra: the land of Molina, endowed with its charter in 1154, was governed as four sexmas until 1813 and still manages communal forestry assets.
Follow its memory →How the landscape was inhabited
Highlands, canyon, juniper woods and parameras
The terrain provided resources and set seasonal tasks. These four perspectives follow the lives that inhabited them: a juniper woodland can stand on a high paramera, and a highland village can overlook a deep canyon.
The highlands
Orea at 1,500 metres, Checa at 1,380: a highland world of snow, pastures closed in May with thorn barriers, and commons opened strictly in unison.
Follow its memory →Living landscapeThe canyon
From Peralejos de las Truchas to Valtablado del Río: bridges, waterfalls, a hand-carved cliff tunnel, and the Civil War front.
Follow its memory →Living landscapeThe juniper woodland
Spanish juniper boughs roofed traditional pastoral chozones: dry-stone walls beneath thatched branches without nails or tiles, in Escalera, Lebrancón, Ablanque, and Olmeda de Cobeta.
Follow its memory →Living landscapeThe parameras
Zaorejas at 1,270 metres above a Tagus river flowing at 860 m: the open highlands of Molina and Alto Tajo, between transhumance trails, sinkholes, and quiet houses.
Follow its memory →Water joins the lands
Follow a river, find a memory
From the Tremedal and Montes Universales to Molina, the salt pans and the canyon. Each river leads to its villages, feeding streams, and the stories of those who lived alongside the water.
You can also follow time
Lands and landscapes link directly with the memory section of the atlas. To journey from early prehistoric traces to modern village life, open Where to begin. To locate a name and compare what has changed, open the map.