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

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

Go down into the cellars under La Villa and work out how far the network runs under the streets

Taste Bobal as a single variety and work out why it spent a century being blended away

Walk the medieval quarter above the cellars, which is a separate town from the modern one

Work out what the altitude does here: around 700 metres, with cold nights on a hot plateau

Eat the local embutidos with the wine, which is what the cellars were stocked for

Requena sits on a plateau at around 700 metres inland from Valencia, and under its medieval quarter — La Villa — is a network of cellars cut into the rock, some of them Arab in origin, used for centuries to store wine at constant temperature. The grape here is Bobal, a thick-skinned, deeply coloured variety that was long treated as bulk material for blending and is now being taken seriously as a wine in its own right. Requena also makes embutidos, and the two go together deliberately.

Requena: Wine Cellars Under a Medieval Town

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

Get a ticket — since 2013 attendance has been capped at 22,000 and you cannot simply turn up

Watch the palo jabón, because the battle does not start until somebody gets the ham down

Be in the Plaza del Pueblo when the lorry beds tip and the whole load goes into the street

Work out the numbers: about 150 tonnes of tomatoes, six lorries, one hour

Stay for the hosing down afterwards and work out how the town is clean again by the afternoon

On the last Wednesday of August, during Buñol's patronal week, six lorries move slowly through the Calle San Luis, the Calle Cid and the Plaza del Pueblo distributing close to 150 tonnes of tomatoes, and 22,000 people — the cap since 2013 — throw them at each other for an hour. It starts when somebody manages to get the ham off the greased pole and the rocket goes up, usually around noon. The best moment is when the lorry beds tip and the whole load goes into the street. Then the fire brigade hoses everything down and the town is clean by mid-afternoon.

La Tomatina: A Hundred and Fifty Tonnes of Tomatoes

Walk in through the successive gates strung along the neck and work out that there is no other way in

Look down at the Júcar and work out how nearly the loop closes

Work out why the place was called impregnable, and that Alfonso VIII still took it in 1184

Go into the 8th-century Muslim castle at the end of the spur, a parador since 1966

Count the churches in a village of a few hundred people and work out what that implies

The Júcar loops almost completely round the promontory Alarcón stands on, which made the place effectively impregnable — the castle is Muslim work of the 8th century and Alfonso VIII took it in 1184. The way in is still through successive gates strung along the neck of the meander. The castle at the point of the spur opened as a parador in 1966 and is now what the town largely lives on. The village inside the walls has a few hundred people and four churches, which tells you what size it used to be.

Alarcón: A Fortress in a River Loop

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 the university's Paraninfo and the Plateresque facade Cisneros paid for

Find out what the Complutensian Polyglot Bible was, and that it carried the first printed Greek New Testament and Septuagint

Go into the house where Cervantes was born and sit on the bench outside with him and Sancho

Work out the gap: the university was suppressed in 1836 and moved to Madrid, and the town had none until 1977

Walk the Calle Mayor — 396 metres, the longest street in Europe still arcaded on both sides, with an upper gallery that once let Jewish households reach each other without going down into the street

Cardinal Cisneros founded the university here on 13 April 1499, and what came out of it was the Complutensian Polyglot Bible — Hebrew, Greek and Latin in parallel columns with some parts in Aramaic, the first polyglot edition of a complete Bible, carrying the first printed editions of the Greek New Testament, the Septuagint and the Targum Onkelos. Cisneros bought the manuscripts himself and brought in the best theologians he could find. Cervantes was born in the town. The university was suppressed by royal order on 29 October 1836 and moved to Madrid, and Alcalá only got one back in 1977. UNESCO made the city a World Heritage Site in 1998.

Alcalá de Henares: Cervantes and the Polyglot Bible

Take a 4x4 route across the raña, the 8,000-hectare plain that fills the south-east of the park

Come in late September for the berrea, when the red deer stags roar across the raña at dawn and dusk

Work out why the two landscapes need each other: feeding on the open plain, shelter in the sierra woods

Look for black vulture and Spanish imperial eagle, both of which breed in the park

Find out how close it came to being an army firing range, and who stopped it in the 1980s

Cabañeros holds one of the best-preserved stretches of Mediterranean forest in Spain, and it exists because local people fought to stop the army turning it into a firing and manoeuvre range. It was made a natural park in 1988 and a national park in 1995. It is two landscapes working together: the raña, an 8,000-hectare plain filled with material washed off the surrounding hills about three million years ago, and the sierras above it. The animals feed on the open grassland and shelter in the thick woods, which is why the place supports what it does. It is also the least-visited national park in the country.