Vilafamés: a castle, a Miró and plenty of "red bottoms"

Vilafamés, 25 kilometers from Castellón de la Plana, is a village you discover on one of those aimless drives through the roads of Castellón. A classic postcard view, with the castle up top. The houses sit below, piled up on the hillside with that deliciously chaotic logic that only medieval villages seem to understand, beyond the idea of "how to live on a slope without falling into the void". Perhaps that is why Vilafamés has belonged for more than a decade to the club of Los Pueblos Más Bonitos de España, and we had to find out why.

The legend of the "red bottoms"

Once the car is parked, taking Calle de la Font from the car park, our first stop is at la plaza de la Font. It is small, with a fountain that seems to want to shelter against the city wall. From this point we can mark the lower limit of the well-known Muslim quarter, the Quartijo. The streets narrow, the layout becomes irregular, and the slopes up to the castle defy gravity, but not excessively. That is, the walk never turns into a tightrope act, as happens in the villages of the south.

But we take the other side, along Calle de la Font towards the castle. A few metres from the square, on the left flank of the street, appears one of the emblems of Vilafamés: the Roca Grossa. Some 2,163 tonnes of rodeno stone wedged in the middle of the street, with no anchors, held in place solely by its own weight. A titan might have put it there in more pagan times; and indeed it would have been a gift for any mythological scribbler. But everything suggests it formed millions of years ago, when human beings probably were not even a project of destiny yet.

According to the locals, there is a legend that tells how some neighbours, tired of it disrupting traffic, tried to move it by tying ropes to it. The rope gave way, they all fell into the mud and ended up with their backsides dyed that reddish colour so characteristic of the land of Vilafamés. That was the origin of the pseudo-demonym by which the inhabitants of this village are known: the "culroig", in homespun Castilian, the "culos rojos" ("red bottoms").

At the end, you have to turn onto Calle Cervantes to stop at the Tourist Office and pick up the tips needed to make the most of the getaway. Above all for all the activities that can be done in the natural surroundings of this incredible village in the province of Castellón.

The work of Joan Miró

Leaving the office, take Calle Diputació Provincial in the direction of the Quartijo quarter. A few metres away is one of Vilafamés' essential places: the Museu d'Art Contemporani Vicente Aguilera Cerni, better known as MACVAC. It is not housed in just any building, since it is installed in the Palau del Batlle, a 15th-century palace that exemplifies that Valencian Gothic which flourished in this land at the same time as the Quattrocento did in Italy, which did nothing but dazzle minds in the city of Florence.

Since 1972 it has been the seat of the MACVAC, a project that dates back to 1968, when the Valencian art critic Vicente Aguilera Cerni dropped by Vilafamés to visit a relative. It seems the idea of setting up a Museum of Contemporary Art was his, and the town council did not turn it down. The museum opened in the Palau del Batlle in 1972 and since then it has been building up its permanent collection with almost exclusively the help of donations and loans from the artists. Some 700 works gathered through this selfless method, without systematic purchase of funds. A real achievement.

The collection is a true luxury, including pieces by Picasso, Chagall, Motherwell, Sempere, Tàpies, Robert Capa and Miró. Notably, in 1980, Joan Miró donated to the museum, under the name Golafre, a lithograph with a handwritten dedication dated 26 June of that year. And Vilafamés died of love.

The entrance is not free, it costs three euros, but it is more than well spent. Moreover, it is not the only contemporary art museum in the village. Just a few metres away is the Museo Berreby, the house of a painter of Algerian origin who spent his whole life travelling the world and who, as life would have it, decided to leave his work on display in the village of Vilafamés, to which he was devoted. And this entrance is free.

A castle between viewpoints

Going around the museum, you reach Calle Iglesia, and halfway along the street stands the church of the Asunción. Built between the 16th and 18th centuries, it is faithful to the architecture of the area, mixing late Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque in layers that reveal how another level was added to its structure in each century. Its character is sober in the high altarpiece and in the chapels, with little ornamentation. Nothing more.

But you will notice that everyone stops at the exterior. More specifically, at the viewpoint at the foot of the church. The balcony of Vilafamés over La Plana de l'Arc opens wide: vineyards, almond trees, fields that seem to touch the clouds on the horizon... Here is the panorama of the journey, the perfect portrait of a landscape that leaves absolutely no one indifferent.

From the church, you must keep working your adductors and quadriceps, because the street keeps climbing to the highest part of the hill, where the castle marks the end of the route. The narrow lanes of the Quartijo come to an end at the church of the Sangre, located opposite the castle. It is the first Christian temple built in the municipality after the conquest in the 13th century. And it was built taking advantage of an Islamic cistern that ended up integrated into its architecture, as part of the crypt. Its name has nothing to do with any bloody practice of the Inquisition, don't go thinking that. In fact, in 1612, when the building passed into the hands of the Cofradía de la Purísima Sangre de Jesús, it adopted that name out of veneration for the Christ of the Blood. Inside, you can see Baroque frescoes by the Guilló brothers.

The castle is the final stop. Its origin is Andalusian, and it is known that it was conquered in 1233 by Jaime I, passed through the military orders of Montesa and San Juan, and endured centuries of hardship and conflict. The circular tower visible at first glance is later, more specifically from the Carlist period of the 19th century. From its Islamic past it preserves a discreet cistern, which seems to be hidden at the base of the tower.

Bonus track for the curious

Going down from the castle towards the new part of the village and taking Carrer Sant Antoni, before reaching the car park you will find la Silla Roja. It is the typical village chair made of wood and wicker, but with certain peculiarities. It measures four metres in height, is an intense red, and faces the historic centre from one of the most beautiful viewpoints in the village.

At the tourist office they will give you information on the number of rock shelters and archaeological sites around Vilafamés. In the Cova de Dalt del Tossal de la Font, an extensive network of karst galleries of 2,282 metres next to the urban centre, human fossils belonging to Homo neanderthalensis were recovered in the 1980s, which could be between 90,000 and 70,000 years old.

Already on the hillside, a very pleasant excursion can be made to the Abric del Castell, one of the most important sets of schematic rock art in the Valencian Community. It has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO since 1998.

And to eat:

• El Rullo: It is located in the upper part of Carrer la Font, and it is a rural hotel with a restaurant serving locally sourced cuisine. The menu gets straight to the point, because this is the place to eat the Olleta de Vilafamés, a hearty spoon stew with chickpeas, pig's ear and cardoon that has been the house specialty for generations. They are also famous for the tombet de cordero and the rice baked inside a pumpkin, a very local dish that must be ordered in advance (Carrer la Font, 2).

• La Vinya Tapes i Vins: Very close to the Roca Grossa, this restaurant may not attract much attention, but I recommend you take a look inside. It is a small place where the cooking is done with care and dedication. It blends local produce with very contemporary technique: gyozas filled with homemade longaniza and blood sausage, rape cannelloni with mushrooms and prawns, low-temperature pork belly with poached egg... The menu is short but full of sense. That said, if you don't book, you're out of luck (Carrer la Font, 17).

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