Climb up to the castle on its crag above the town

Find Juan Pacheco's coat of arms on the vault keystones and on the four faces of the keep

Walk the barbican and the round towers he added between 1449 and 1454

Visit the interpretation centre at the foot of the castle on the battle of 25 April 1707

Almansa's castle stands on a crag above the town. Its oldest walls, of rammed earth, were long taken for Almohad work, but tests during the 2008 restoration dated them to the first decades of Christian rule, around 1300; Don Juan Manuel rebuilt it in the 14th century, and Juan Pacheco, second Marquis of Villena, gave it its present shape between 1449 and 1454, with the keep, the round towers and the barbican, his arms carved on the vault keystones and on all four faces of the keep. On 25 April 1707, on the plain below, the Duke of Berwick's army for Philip V beat the forces of Archduke Charles in one of the great battles of the War of the Spanish Succession.

Almansa: The Castle on the Rock and the Battle of 1707

Go into the municipal archaeological museum and find out which pieces are still there after the theft of 27 August 2026

Work out why the iron pieces matter: the oldest found in Spain, from when iron was still a precious metal

Find out who José María Soler García was and what he found near this town in 1963

Climb to the Atalaya castle on the hill above the town

Come for the Moros y Cristianos, which is one of the biggest in the Valencian country

The Villena archaeologist José María Soler García found the treasure in 1963: fifty-nine objects in gold, silver, iron and amber weighing almost ten kilos, the most important gold vessel hoard in Spain and the second in Europe after the royal tombs at Mycenae. Its iron pieces are the oldest found in Spain, from a period when iron was still a precious metal worth hoarding. On the night of 27 August 2026 much of it was stolen — mostly the gold, with several silver pieces left behind — so check what is actually on display before you go.

Villena: A Bronze Age Hoard of Gold

Go into one of the cave houses under the old quarter, which are cut into the rock and still occupied

Climb to the castle and find out what the keep was used for in the 19th century

Work out the reversal: Chinchilla was the town and Albacete the village, and then it went the other way

Walk the Plaza de la Mantelería and the 16th-century streets around it

Look out over the Albacete plain and work out why anyone put a town on this particular hill

Chinchilla sits on a hill above the Albacete plain and was the important town here long before Albacete was anything — it gave its name to the whole district. Under the old quarter is a network of cave houses cut into the soft rock, still lived in, and above it a castle with a keep that later served as a military prison. The Plaza de la Mantelería and the streets round it are a compact 16th-century ensemble that has survived because the town stopped growing when Albacete took over.

Chinchilla de Montearagón: A Town Over Its Own Caves

Climb into the Covetes dels Moros and work out that there is no original way up to them

Work through the theories — granary, refuge, burial — and decide which one the shape supports

Find the bullring cut directly out of the rock rather than built

Walk the medieval quarter on the cliff edge above the Clariano

Go into the old ice wells on the sierra above, where snow was stored for the summer

In a cliff face above Bocairent there are dozens of small rectangular chambers cut into the rock in rows, opening onto nothing — no path, no stair, no floor below them. They are called the Covetes dels Moros, and nobody is certain what they were: granaries, refuges and burial chambers have all been argued. They are generally dated to the Islamic period. The town below is built into the rock itself, with a bullring cut out of the hillside and a network of medieval streets on the cliff edge above the Clariano.

Bocairent: A Cliff Full of Cut Chambers

Stand on the bridge and look up at a village built into the wall of a river meander

Climb to the Almohad castle of the 12th or 13th century on the rock above the houses

Go into one of the cave houses and find the ones that go right through the ridge and out the other side

Work out what the name means and what it tells you about who built the place

Walk or swim the Júcar below the village, which is what the gorge is for in summer

The Júcar has cut a meander so tight into the Albacete plateau that the village of Alcalá del Júcar is built on both the inside of the bend and up its wall, with an Almohad castle of the 12th or 13th century on the crag above. The houses are pushed back into the soft rock — some of them run right through the ridge and come out as windows on the far side — and several of the cave houses are open to go into. The name is from the Arabic for castle: the castle of the river Júcar.

Alcalá del Júcar: A Village Dug Into a Gorge

Find the portrait of Philip V in the Museu de l'Almodí and check which way up it is hanging

Work out why: the town was burned in 1707 and renamed after the man in the picture

Walk the length of the castle along the ridge — it is two castles, the Castell Menor and the Castell Major

Find out which popes came from here, and what the Borja family did next

Find the Gothic Sant Feliu church below the castle, one of the oldest buildings left after the fire

Xàtiva backed the Austrian side in the War of the Spanish Succession, and in 1707 Bourbon troops burned the town in reprisal. Philip V then renamed it San Felipe, after himself; the Cortes of Cádiz gave the old name back in 1811. The town has not forgotten. In its museum hangs a portrait of Philip V, and it hangs upside down. Xàtiva was also the cradle of the Borja popes — Calixtus III and Alexander VI — and the twin castle on the ridge above, praised by al-Idrisi in the 12th century for its beauty and strength, runs along the whole crest.

Xàtiva: The Town Hung Upside Down

Be in the street for a tamborada and work out what twenty-five thousand drums at once actually does to you

Find out what the black smock and red neckerchief mean and where the costume comes from

Be there for the climb to the Calvario in the first hours of Good Friday, which is the set piece

Find out what UNESCO inscribed in 2018, and that Tobarra, Moratalla and Mula do the same thing

Borrow or hire a drum and join in, which is the point — this is not a spectator event

For several days over Easter the town of Hellín beats drums, continuously, in the street, in enormous numbers — around twenty-five thousand drummers, individually and in peñas, drumming through the night and into the following day until their hands bleed, which is not a metaphor. One of the set pieces is the climb to the Calvario in the first hours of Good Friday. It is one of a cluster of Spanish Holy Week drum towns, and it is on the UNESCO intangible heritage list as part of the Tamboradas ritual drum-playing inscription of 2018. Standing inside it is physically overwhelming in a way that no recording conveys.

Hellín: Twenty Thousand Drums

Walk round the castle of the Sad Countess, built from 1400 in the lowest part of the town

Find the Palacio de la Mosquera, the neoclassical house of the exiled Infante Luis de Borbón

Go underground in the Cuevas del Águila at Ramacastañas

Find the town's coat of arms, which shows the castle in flames

Arenas de San Pedro sits on the south side of the Gredos, above the Tiétar valley, and its castle is unusual for standing low in the town rather than on a height: the Constable Ruy López Dávalos ordered it built in 1400. In 1430 it went as a dowry to Juana Pimentel when she married Álvaro de Luna, the royal favourite who was beheaded in Valladolid on 2 June 1453, and it is known as the castle of the Sad Countess. At the other end of town the Palacio de la Mosquera is a neoclassical house built by the Infante Luis de Borbón, son of Philip V, after he was sent away from court for marrying beneath him. Nine kilometres south, at Ramacastañas, are the Cuevas del Águila.

Arenas de San Pedro: The Sad Countess's Castle and the Eagle Caves

Walk the Black Pool and Clear Fountain trail (7km) from Bárcena Mayor into the park's beech and oak forest

Walk the Fuente Clara path along the Argonza river, the second of the two main routes starting directly from the village

Find Bárcena Mayor's open wooden balconies (corredores) and stone façades, protected as a Historic-Artistic Site since 1979

Hike to the Alto de la Guarda viewpoint for a wide view over the whole Saja-Besaya massif

Bárcena Mayor is the only inhabited settlement inside the boundary of the Saja-Besaya natural park, and it sits within the Saja National Hunting Reserve as well. It was declared a historic-artistic ensemble in 1979 as a homogeneous and well-preserved example of montañesa architecture — stone houses with wooden balconies and deep overhanging eaves, built for a wet mountain climate. Waymarked trails leave from the edge of the village straight into beech and oak forest, which is what the whole valley is: one of the largest continuous deciduous woodlands in southern Europe.