“Cívica looks like a Tibetan village or the setting of a Wagner opera. The traveler has never been to Tibet but he imagines that its villages must be like that, solemn, miserable, almost empty, full of stairs and balustrades, hanging from the rocks and also pierced into the rock”, Camilo José Cela dedicated these lines to him. Trip to Alcarria in a hamlet located in Brihuega, Guadalajara. As the author describes it, Cívica offers a landscape typical of the collective imagination that some regions of Asia offer us.
In concrete terms, when you walk through Cívica, you get the impression that a piece of Turkey has gone on holiday to Spain, since this private hamlet is reminiscent of a piece of Turkish Cappadocia. Like this region of southeastern Europe, Cívica is famous for its carved stone architecture.
It is a Tibetan village, built on a hill. It has various staircases, doors, windows, terraces, arches, walkways, stone balustrades, landings and various decorations visible from the outside. Although the property is private and inaccessible, the scenery it offers is so spectacular that it is worth seeing from afar.
The history of Cívica dates back to the Middle Ages. Apparently, the village was inhabited at that time by Sephardic Jews and monks of the Order of the Temple, who took advantage of the local waterfalls to build a small paper factory. From there emerges a small excavation in the stone, but the complex we know today took almost half a millennium longer.
The heritage that made this hamlet of Guadalajara famous is recent. The village as it stands today was built between the 1950s and 1970s by the priest Aurelio Pérez, who inherited these lands and dedicated 20 years of his life to building Cívica, stone by stone, to turn it into a sanctuary. Little is known about the priest beyond his name and his work.
It is only remembered that every day, after mass, the priest went to the enclave with a group of workers hired by himself to engrave his architectural idea in stone. Nobody knows why Aurelio Pérez undertook to carve balustrades, arches and galleries in that carved rock. What is evident is that he put all his effort, in addition to his assets. It is said that it was his way of investing an inheritance he had received but, ironically, he left no heirs. When he died, the place became the property of his housekeeper.
From her it passed to her nephews who apparently had the idea of creating a bar that they called “El cojo” and which is currently not open.
Active tuffs
Cívica is much more than its fascinating complex, it also offers an unprecedented natural enclave. It would not be unreasonable for Aurelio Pérez to choose this enclave only for its views: its excavations are surrounded by curious natural formations, Las Tobas Activas. Tuffs are limestone formations, very porous and light, formed by the lime carried in dissolution by the waters of the springs of the area and which is deposited on the ground, on the plants or other things that are in its path. The priest’s own construction is erected on one of these tuffs, although inactive.
The tuffs are active when they have water and inactive when they do not. Among the first, the one located a few meters to the left of Cívica stands out. On its green and fresh moss falls a waterfall of water that comes from the pipe located at the top of the neighborhood and, after watering the orchards, it flows towards the tuff wall to reach the Tajuña River. Grasses and fig trees also grow well watered in the tuff environment and constitute a very striking, beautiful and unique natural ensemble.
So much so that due to its ecological value, it is protected by European regulations and is part of the Natura 2000 network (network of biodiversity conservation areas in the European Union). The area is well signposted, with signs from the town hall explaining the origin of this phenomenon.
The Romanesque church of Yela
Near Cívica, less than 10 minutes by car, is the Yela neighborhood. This municipality is home to a Romanesque church from the 16th century. XII with a past closely linked to the Civil War. Although it seems to be in perfect condition, the building was completely destroyed and had to be rehabilitated in the 1950s in a project “unfortunate for some”, they explain on the municipality’s website. If we compare with the pre-war images, the church received a house added later and it lacked the characteristic gallery of arches that it has today. There are original Romanesque remains, such as a capital and an arch.
It is known that originally the building had a nave with a belfry, a straight presbytery, a semicircular apse, a beautiful porticoed gallery, although of a different structure from the current one, and a south portal that had pointed archivolts on four columns with plant decoration. Of this primitive complex, after the destruction of the civil war and its partial reconstruction, only the belfry, the head and the north wall remain, the rest of its architectural elements are modern.
The highlight of the church is its porticoed atrium with semicircular arches on columns with plant decoration. The entrance to the temple has several deteriorating semicircular archivolts, with zigzag details and dandelions. On the opposite façade you can see the remains of the original church.
