El Tobar and Valtablado de Beteta
The village of El Tobar, located downstream of the lagoons of the same name, is an ideal place to rest. Surrounded by a spectacular natural landscape, the village of El Tobar is an essential stop for hiking and other mountain sports.
Among the places to visit, the laundry room, once the epicenter of the social life of the village, offers a window to the past where local women gathered to wash clothes and share stories. Its traditional structure, well preserved, will transport you to a time when life was very different from today.
The Parish Church of San Ginés, stands as a symbol of the religious and architectural legacy of El Tobar. It is a small temple of great beauty built on a single nave divided into three sections by transverse arches and pilasters of cruciform base that support the formeros arches. The roof is closed in groin vault. It must have had an alfarje, because the present walls do not support the structure of the vault.
Finally, the ethnographic museum, opened in 1986 on the initiative of an association of the municipality, is a must-see. This museum houses a vast collection of objects and tools that illustrate the rural life of yesteryear. From farming tools to traditional clothing, each piece tells a story of work, customs and traditions that have shaped the identity of El Tobar.
Valtablado de Beteta is one of the seven villages that, together with Cueva del Hierro, Valsalobre, El Tobar, Santa María del Val, Lagunaseca and Masegosa, formed part of the Villa y Señorío de Beteta. Historically it is mentioned at the end of the XII century, when the territory of the southern bank of the Tajo was conquered from the Arabs by the Christian leaders of the kingdom of Castile. With the disappearance of the jurisdictional rights held by the last representative of the noble nobility, the Marquis of Valmediado, Valtablado and the other villages mentioned above became part of independent municipalities in 1850.
It was probably the weakest town in the region and the worst off in the distribution of municipalities segregated from the old manor. Its municipal district had only 1,400 hectares and its cultivated land was scarce, as well as its forest mass.
In 1950 it had 117 inhabitants and few public services. At this time the economic policies of transferring the rural population to the more industrialized cities forced many families of our mountains to emigrate, especially in the 1960s and early 1970s. This greatly weakened the aforementioned villages and in particular Valtablado.
In 1970 the neighbors sent a letter to the Civil Governor about a matter concerning the Dehesa de Carrascalejo, from which it can be deduced that negotiations with the Forestry Administration for the sale of the entire municipal area had already begun.
From a report of the Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICONA), the body that replaced the State Forestry Heritage, we know that on the same date, January 24, 1972, numerous residents of Valtablado de Beteta wrote to accept as the value of the properties that make up the total of the municipality, except for the public utility mount number 213, the amount of 7,967,750 pesetas, as a result of the valuation made by the State Forestry Heritage.
Once the purchase price had been agreed upon, all that remained was to give legal form to the transfer, and the State opted for the formula of forced expropriation. Thus, Decree 7231/1972, of December 21, 1972, was published in the Official State Gazette of January 23, 1973, declaring the public utility, necessity and urgency of the occupation, for the purpose of reforestation, of different properties located in the municipality of Valtablado de Beteta, in the province of Cuenca.
Simultaneously to the negotiations to sell the patrimony, the acts that would conclude with the incorporation of the municipality of Valtablado to the municipality of Beteta took place.
By then the State Administration was promoting a policy of aggregation of small towns to other more important bordering towns – in those same years the aggregation of El Tobar to Beteta also took place – and the authorities opted to incorporate Valtablado to Beteta.
Over the years the town center has deteriorated, however, strolling through its old streets, seeing the remains of the church or going down to the place where the fountain and the washing place are still located is an experience that leaves no visitor indifferent.
