In the town of Rozalén

On the façade of the Letur City Hall, a precious 16th century portico, they boast an old monarchical adhesion plaque.

It is rather small, so it is advisable to sharpen your eyes and direct it to the frontispiece, near the flagpoles.

There they will be able to read our eyes, perplexed, the following sentence: "Long live King Amadeo I and the Constitution."

enlarge photo Cova Fernández

Poor Amadeo de Saboya, who was at the forefront of the patriotic designs for just 27 months (between November 1870 and February 1873) and ended up abdicating in a bad way, did not have time for almost anyone to take a liking to him.

Except for the people of Letur, who are so empathetic and hospitable.

It will be given by the region, this Sierra del Segura that in the last foothills of Albacete, one step away from the borders with Murcia, Jaén and Granada, becomes steep and impassable, as beautiful as it is difficult to communicate.

Letur is a beautiful town until saying enough, a place far from almost any other.

So convoluted is its access, winding along the gorges south of the Segura River, that it has to deal - like so many other rural areas - with the specter of depopulation.

Barely 970 inhabitants count, two-thirds in the urban fabric, very few in the beautiful old town.

This 12th-century medieval labyrinth, with Andalusian-style houses, has been classified as a historical-artistic complex since 1983, but today it hardly serves as a catalog of rental apartments for rural tourism.

Almost 300 squares of these lodgings house its convoluted streets.

You don't need a preconceived plan to get around Letur, a small and manageable place.

The best thing is to get lost in the narrow and winding streets of its almost millenary heart.

You can start with

(in Arabic, "neighborhood in height"), the most colorful, which starts from the

.

This cul-de-sac with an Islamic layout astonishes due to the profusion of colorful doors and its former condition of a walkway, the upper part of some walls of which there is hardly any trace.

Just a little further down, in the

, we will see the last vestige of that fortified Letur.

Time has been even more merciless with the castle, which was also built in the 12th century, but was demolished in the 1940s, due to those atrocities typical of the time.

Today only a few remains are preserved in the back of the

.

enlarge photo View of the Albacete town of Letur.

José A. Bernat Bacete getty images

The best thing is to get lost, we said.

Marvel at the corners,

(Ánimas, Sahucos, Portalico) or, even more charming, the houses that are identified with the name of their inhabitants (

).

And all to return to a

that always, even with pandemics on their backs, the phrase of a Renaissance chronicler makes good: "Aquesta happy town with plenty of water and freshness."

A place conducive to refreshments at the

, with that gigantic oven that has been giving joy to stomachs for 40 long years.

Or for a Monastrell wine at the El Castillo bar, which encloses, behind its humble appearance and the paper tablecloths, an unheard of treasure: its large food hall takes advantage of a beautiful old private theater from the 1950s.

With its amphitheater and everything.

El Castillo bar hides an unprecedented treasure: a private theater from the fifties, amphitheater included

It is not the only surprise that the local hospitality industry has in store for us.

Just a few meters away, going down Calle de la Aurora, La Garduña bar not only provides us with a good conduit, but also some toilets decorated with original pages of the

newspaper

dating from… 1928!

"I bought them from a local collector", details the owner, an Argentine who became a Leturian a decade ago because of those moves that sometimes the heart dictates.

"I selected pages that did not include political comments, to avoid suspicions ...".

Because here, as everywhere, we find affiliations of all colors.

Elena Navarro, another pro from Leturian and head of the Tourist Office - with some 6,000 registered visitors a year in the pre-pandemic era - snorts when she sees us repair next to the town hall on a Falangist plaque dated, with its mandatory yoke and arrows, in November 1973. "You all look at the same thing," he protests.

The milestone commemorates the first prize obtained by the town on the occasion of the provincial contest for the beautification of towns, but it is true that Letur would not need ornaments to dazzle the outsider.

It is enough to enter the

, built in characteristic tuff stone (calcareous) between the 15th and 16th centuries, under late Gothic patterns and commissioned by the Order of Santiago, which throughout the region had a lot of I send.

Or by approaching the spectacular

, a natural balcony in front of the

, where the landscape unfolds like a giant map.

To his left is the

, close to the town of

, nicknamed the Switzerland of La Mancha and where a large part of the mythical film

.

To the right, the

serves as a natural border with

, the town where the kids decorate the streets with ephemeral and fabulous sawdust carpets of a thousand colors, coinciding with the Corpus Christi and the communions of the children.

The Grotto of Frescor

“Ours are streets with a lot of pain and a lot of joy.

When you get to know Letur, you also understand a lot about me, ”says the most illustrious Leturian in history, the singer Rozalén, who promoted the third weekend of July of a festival, Leturalma, which this year the covid also took ahead .

The interpreter of

Violeta suggests eating at La Artezuela (608 46 67 13), a mecca for agrotourism, near the

what did we tell you about the gazetteer? - and the waterfalls of the stream that gives the town its name .

And since Silvia Álvarez, in charge of the establishment, entertains us with a Cabeza de Hierro, a delicious red from the Lazo wineries, we end up approaching the La Zorrera estate, in the neighboring town of

, where the wine comes from.

José Alberto Antequera, its owner —although he likes to consider himself a “poor viticulturist” - is a high school teacher in love with oenology.

And that he not only knows well the repertoire of

, but also that of Manolo García, with his home and family origins from Fereño.

"Another charming man from these lands," he proudly assures.

"Although when he walks around here, with undyed hair, it might be hard for you to recognize him ...".

In Letur, and also in its surroundings,

.

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