At 1,693 meters above sea level, Valdelinares, located in the Sierra de Gúdar, boasts of being the highest town in Spain.
In the Sierra de Gúdar, next to the ski resort of Javalambre and Valdelinares, is Valdelinares, the highest town in the Iberian Peninsula, in a tough competition with Vilaflor de Chasna (Tenerife) for the title of “the highest high in Spain.” The city of Tenerife reaches 2,484 meters above sea level. Still, its population center is concentrated in the urban area, located at 1,414 meters. In comparison, the 87 inhabitants registered in Valdelinares generally live at 1,690 meters, with the gate from the church at 1,962 meters.
Located 70 kilometers from Teruel, in the Middle Ages and practically all of the Old Regime, it was royal land, belonging to the community of villages of Teruel in the sesma of Campo de Monteagudo until the provincial division of 1833. the city stands on a hill crowned by its cemetery, surrounded by vast meadows, with a leafy pine forest that defines the colorful landscape. The presence of a small massif of Moorish pine (pinus uncinata) gives the region a curiosity of the first order: it is the southernmost region of Europe. It is located and is so characteristic of the environment of the municipality that determines the origin of its name and coat of arms, composed of five green pines in reference to its Latin name: Val de Lignare (Valley between pine forests).
Its famous ski resort is one of its great attractions. In addition, for the visitor’s convenience, it is located just seven kilometers from an urban center that stands out for the excellent conservation of the rural-traditional environment, both aesthetically and in terms of work. Indeed, the primary sector remains the main economic activity, with 67% of the employed population and 48% of total economic production collected by the livestock, agricultural, and forestry sub-sectors.
The weight of agricultural activity has allowed the municipality to have a vast rustic unbuilt territory, allowing it to maintain the exercise of these economic activities while protecting its environmental and landscape values. The productive surface of the municipality represents more than three quarters of the total, divided between agricultural land, meadows and pastures, forest land, and other lands.
At the same time, this resource values tourist activity, which strongly emerges to make the service sector the second most important not only in total production, where it reaches 34%, but also in the occupied population, where it represents 26 % of the work of neighbors, a figure that is expected to grow exponentially due to the increase in sports and activities focused on the enjoyment of the rural environment that is developing in the area.
