“Thesilhouette of my village Villarluengo stands out among the wild mountains that want to touch the sky“. Already Enrique Royo with his copla gave us an idea of the deep impression of the traveler when contemplating for the first time the steep figure of this town. Villarluengo is located in the foothills of the Monte Santo mountain, on a spur of limestone rocks at about 1,130 meters. altitude, and downwards, it overlooks the deep gorges of the Cañada River.
It has, in its large municipality, with numerous farmhouses grouped in several items and with a hamlet, Montoro de Mezquita, another of the most interesting natural points of the region. Come and discover this beautiful place.
The history of Villarluengo
Within the current municipality of Villarluengo there was a place and castle in the twelfth century, located next to the Guadalope river, called Nocito or Noched. Villarluengo was later donated by Alfonso II in 1194 to Fray Gascón of the Order of the Holy Redeemer, in an attempt to establish a population in this depopulated land. Two years later the Order of the Holy Redeemer was dissolved and all its rights, goods and belongings passed to the Templars. In 1197 Friar Pontius Marshal of the Order of the Temple, granted his second town charter to 20 residents of the town. The Templars definitively consolidated these territories, dominating them for almost a century until their dissolution in 1312.
Subsequently, Villarluengo passed into the hands of the Order of San Juan del Hospital, whose dominion over the town lasted until 1811. Throughout these centuries there were moments of great prosperity for the town, which reached a population of 1,800 inhabitants. In 1541 the Monte Santo Convent was founded, a great center of regional religiosity, later used in the Carlist wars as a fortress and destroyed in 1840 by the liberal troops. In 1789, the Temprado family, together with French technicians and capital, set up the first continuous paper mill in Spain in Villarluengo. Later the factories were adapted for textile production and people from the locality and nearby towns worked in them. It closed its doors in 1958, after the civil war and the maquis era. The thermal baths were also in operation during this period. Villarluengo was the first town in the province to have electricity, after the capital, and the first in the region to have running water and paved streets.
Raw nature
The environment of the locality is wild, surrounded by mountains and ravines that overwhelm. The Montoro Organs undoubtedly stand out, one of the four Natural Monuments of Maestrazgo. It is an area where nature has formed whimsical rocky figures in the shape of flutes looking at the sky. Dizzying! Currently, the Organs of Montoro are part of the route of the slowdriving route “The Silent Route”, with a panoramic viewpoint from which to contemplate this fantastic natural area.
Want to know more? Click on the following link and contact the Tourist Office.
