Village
Municipality of La Hoya de Buñol whose church preserves its seventeenth-century structure beneath an eighteenth-century façade and a bell tower that was the minaret of the mosque occupying the site; in its district there is a seventeenth-century snow well, traditional dry-stone buildings, the Iberian settlement of the Pico de los Ajos and the Cueva de las Palomas, with a waterfall, and at the festivals rin ran is served, a cold dish of mashed potato with dried pepper and salt cod.
Nature
The Cueva de las Palomas, in the municipal area of Yátova, is a karst formation of the Juanes river and one of the most notable natural sites in the La Hoya de Buñol district. Its main attraction is a waterfall about 20 metres high along the river's course.
Nature
The Forata reservoir was built in 1969 on the course of the Magro river, in the municipal area of Yátova, about 15 km from Macastre and 20 km from Buñol, and belongs to the Confederación Hidrográfica del Júcar. It covers an area of 231 hectares and has a maximum capacity of 37 cubic hectometres, held back by a gravity dam. In October 2024, when it stood at only 14.16% of its capacity, the reservoir cushioned much of the rainfall from the DANA storm that struck the Magro basin: it released 1,000 m³/s against the 2,000 m³/s flowing in, which prevented an even more devastating flood, although it did not stop flooding further downstream.
Nature
The Sierra Martés, which reaches 1085 m within the municipality of Yátova, is one of the areas with the greatest archaeological richness in the interior of the province of Valencia and is protected by the Generalitat as a reserve with a notable variety of flora; routes such as the PRV-115 and the PRV-148 run through it alongside the Forata reservoir and the Tabarla area.
Curiosity
The landscape of Yátova preserves traditional dry-stone structures, among them the Pozo de la Nieve, a 17th-century ice house declared a Bien de Relevancia Local (a local-level heritage protection listing, below Bien de Interés Cultural), which was used to store ice. The municipality also holds settlements of Iberian origin such as the Pico de los Ajos, later occupied in Roman times and with ceramic and coin finds, as well as the settlements of Castillejos, el Puntal del Viudo and el Collado del Viudo; on the Motrotón hill, two Bronze Age settlements have been identified.
Activity
Yátova, in the Valencian district of la Hoya de Buñol, holds patron saint festivities spread throughout the year in honour of various saints. The village's patron saint is San Isidro Labrador, celebrated on the weekend closest to 15 May, while the main festivities take place in mid-August, with cultural, recreational and bullfighting activities. The municipality also holds its own Fallas on the weekend before San José, with the monuments set up on the Wednesday and burned on the Sunday before 19 March.
Nature
The Juanes river runs through the north of the extensive municipality of Yátova (120.3 km²), while the Rambla de la Horteta runs through the center and the Magro river through the south; the Mijares itself rises within the municipality as a tributary of the Magro, in a hydrographically and orographically complex territory.
Nature
Monte Motrotón, at 612 m, is one of the elevations of Yátova's rugged municipality, which reaches its highest points at the Sierra Martés (1085 m) and the Cerro del Asno (881 m), within the comarca of La Hoya de Buñol.
Monument
The church of the Holy Kings, on the plaza de la Constitución in Yátova (Valencia), is a Catholic temple in Baroque style originating in the 17th century and remodelled in the 18th. It is believed to stand on an old mosque, of which the bell tower would be a vestige of the minaret, although in its current form the bell tower can be dated to the first decades of the 17th century. The façade, with almost no decoration, draws the eye towards the lintelled doorway, flanked by Corinthian columns and topped by a broken pediment supporting an aedicule with an empty niche. The temple has a Latin-cross floor plan and three naves: the central one, covered with a barrel vault, and the side ones each with a half-barrel vault.
Monument
The Snow Well of Yátova is an old snow storage pit located in the town centre of Yátova, in the comarca of La Hoya de Buñol, declared a Bien de Relevancia Local (heritage protection designation of local significance), which, given its size and location, probably supplied ice to the town and other nearby localities. It dates from the late 17th or early 18th century and has a circular plan, six metres in exterior diameter, partly integrated into a farmyard. Built of limestone masonry with mortar, solid brick and tuff blocks, it retains an access door facing south-southwest with a semicircular arch, as well as a window and another opening, now walled up, from which the pulley used to extract the ice used to hang.
Nature
An important Iberian settlement that survived into Roman times, declared a site of archaeological interest in the municipality of Yátova. The site, known archaeologically since 1949, is located on the summit of the Sierra Martés, at 1,086 metres above sea level next to the Magro river, where four other nearby Iberian settlements are found. It is an oppidum of about 7 hectares with two plateaus joined by an isthmus, in which a main street with aligned dwellings is preserved. Its defensive elements stand out: a wall running along the whole perimeter, reinforced on its southeast side by an advanced tower, and a V-shaped ditch reached by a wooden footbridge. The ceramic materials indicate that the settlement reached its height in the 4th century BC and was abandoned around the 1st century BC.
Nature
A protected area of 68.42 hectares along the Magro river, declared a municipal natural site in 2007. It comprises a stretch of the river and its bank located five kilometres upstream of the Forata reservoir, in the municipality of Yátova. Within the site there is a municipal campsite that serves as recreational infrastructure for those visiting the area.
Food and drink
Cold dish of boiled potato crushed with dried red pepper, shredded salt cod, black olives and olive oil. It is the most characteristic contribution of the sierra's cooking and is served as a starter at the municipality's festivities.