Cervera de la Cañada is a village of a few hundred people in the hills south of the Jalón valley, in the province of Zaragoza, with a church of Santa Tecla whose brick apse is one of the finest examples of Mudéjar work in Aragon. The label puts you right in the village, and the town of Calatayud lies twelve kilometres away to the north-east, on the main road between Madrid and Zaragoza.
Mudéjar is the name for the style created by Muslim craftsmen who stayed on under Christian rule after the Reconquista. In Aragon they built churches and towers in brick, using geometric patterns, ceramic tiles and zigzag courses of bricks that look like lace against the sky. Because brick was cheaper than stone and the builders knew it well, the style spread through the region from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, and a group of its monuments is inscribed on the UNESCO list. The apse of Santa Tecla is a good illustration, with blind arcades and decorative panels that seem far too ornate for so small a place. Look at the details for a few minutes, because the village does not offer much else apart from a bar and a cluster of old houses.
The hills around are older still. A cave in this area has been studied for its prehistoric remains and its painted shelters belong to a wider zone of prehistoric art in the interior of Spain. Calatayud itself has Roman origins, in the nearby city of Bilbilis, where the poet Martial was born in the first century AD and to which he longed to return from Rome. The valley produces strong red wines from old Garnacha vines, and the sweet pastries of the town are sold in every bakery.
For riding, the secondary roads here are good fun. They wind between dry, ochre-coloured hills dotted with almond trees and old stone barns, with little traffic and the occasional blind crest, and in spring the almond blossom is lovely. Winters are cold and the plateau gets frost and strong winds, and summer is hot and dry with very little shade. Water is scarce here and the villages are small, so the sensible thing is to fill up in Calatayud, a town of twenty-two thousand people with several stations, supermarkets and plenty of cafes. The Monasterio de Piedra, a waterfall park with a Cistercian abbey, lies about forty minutes south-west and makes a good detour.