Village
Puebla de San Miguel is the highest and most isolated municipality of El Rincón de Ademuz, on the border with Aragón, with barely 53 inhabitants. It sits on the sierra de Javalambre, where the Alto de las Barracas is located, whose 1,839 meters make it the highest point in the Valencian Community, amid cold-climate pastures, pine forests and savin-juniper woods; part of its municipal area forms the Puebla de San Miguel natural park, with the Las Blancas site. Its name indicates that it was founded after the Christian conquest of 1210 by Peter II of Aragon, although prehistoric remains exist on the Valluenga hill. It belonged to the Encomienda de Montesa until it separated from Ademuz; Charles III granted it the title of town through a charter of privilege dated at El Pardo on 12 February 1765.
Monument
Museum devoted to the traditional life and customs of La Puebla de San Miguel, the most isolated municipality in the comarca.
Nature
Protected natural area declared a natural park on 25 May 2007, located in the most rugged part of the comarca of Rincón de Ademuz, an exclave between the provinces of Cuenca and Teruel, on the western spurs of the sierra de Javalambre. Its 6390-hectare surface coincides almost entirely with the whole municipal area of La Puebla de San Miguel and holds some of the oldest Spanish juniper and common juniper woodlands in Europe, together with holm oak groves and the largest yew population in the province of Valencia. The municipality is also home to the Alto de las Barracas (1839 m), the highest point in the Valencian Community.
Nature
The Las Blancas micro-reserve, within the Puebla de San Miguel Natural Park, holds a woodland of Spanish juniper (Juniperus thurifera), also known as sabina, at 1450 metres of altitude. Three specimens stand out for their size and age, with an average lifespan of around 800 years. The name of the site comes from the whitish tone of the trunks. The juniper grows slowly and withstands harsh weather well between 700 and 1400 metres; its fruits, called trabinas, appear only on female trees. In the past its wood was used for fencing and as winter fodder. Access is fenced off for vehicles, though it can be visited on foot along a track from the CV-363 road.
Nature
Extensive pine forest crossed by the blue route of the Puebla de San Miguel Natural Park.
Activity
La Puebla de San Miguel celebrates its main festival on 15 August, in honour of the Assumption of the Virgin, and its patronal festival in September, dedicated to San Miguel Arcángel.
Curiosity
The Puebla de San Miguel Nature Park is home to the largest population of yew trees in the province of Valencia, along with juniper and holm oak woods of great ecological value.
Monument
The church of San Miguel Arcángel, a 17th-century Baroque temple and the parish church of Puebla de San Miguel, replaced an earlier 14th-century building: the parish had been created in 1318, when the bishop of Segorbe-Albarracín, Antonio Muñoz, assigned it its own rector, but the present temple was built in the second half of the 17th century. It follows the model of a Tridentine church typical of the parishes of the comarca, with a rectangular plan, a wide central nave and seven shallow side chapels. The bell tower was commissioned, according to an undated document kept in the municipal archive, probably in the last decades of the 17th century, with detailed conditions agreed between the village and the master builder responsible for erecting it.
Monument
A hermitage of 16th-century origin located in the smallest and highest municipality of the Comunitat Valenciana. It stands outside the village, at kilometre 19 of the road running from Losilla de Aras to Mas del Olmo, next to the Barranco del Saladillo. Documented since the 16th or 17th century, it may originally have been dedicated to San Guillermo, a dedication that changed to San Roque probably in the second half of the 19th century. It is an example of vernacular architecture, with a rectangular plan and a portico supported by short columns with simple Doric capitals. Inside were preserved paintings of San Roque, San Guillermo, San Cristóbal, San Marcos, San Isidro and the Virgen de los Desamparados, as well as oleographs of the Virgen de los Dolores and the archangels San Miguel and San Rafael.
Monument
The Ermita de la Purísima Concepción, also called de la Inmaculada, de la Virgen or del Calvario, is a Catholic shrine in Puebla de San Miguel (Valencia), a Bien de Relevancia Local (a heritage protection designation for assets of local significance in the Valencian Community). The bishops of Segorbe already mention hermitages in the town in the 17th century without specifying their names, a mention repeated during the first half of the 18th century; it was not until the mid-19th century that Madoz identified them: next to the parish church stood the one of la Purísima and the one of San Guillermo, the latter linked to the convent of San Guillén de Castielfabib. In 1936 the images of the parish church and the hermitages were destroyed, and in 1963 the Guía de la Iglesia recorded the one of la Virgen as having no regular worship or artistic ornamentation.
Nature
A panoramic viewpoint in the Parque Natural de la Puebla de San Miguel, near the Alto de las Barracas, with views over the surrounding ravines and mountains; the nearby Pico Gavilán rises to 1747 metres, in a park where more than a third of the area lies above 1400 metres in altitude. This rugged terrain is home to Spanish juniper woodlands and the largest concentration of yew trees in the province of Valencia, as well as formations of creeping juniper that trace the landscape known as leopard skin. Its fauna includes the golden eagle, the Iberian wild goat and the wildcat.
Historical milestone
Carlos III granted the village town status with its own jurisdiction in 1765, separating it from Ademuz; the original document is kept in the municipal archive of this village, the municipality with the highest average altitude in the province of Valencia and in the whole Comunitat Valenciana.