The ice triangle: this is the coldest place of Spain
Around the so-called ice triangle can tell many stories and offer many surprising facts, some unscrupulous record breakers. Everything is related to what gives them their name: ice, cold, winter. In this cold triangle we live with low temperatures that cause freezing months almost completely. Its vertexes are Teruel, Calamocha and Molina de Aragón, which hold the debatable honor of being the coldest populated corner of Spain. Only suitable for the brave.
One of the typical landscapes of the area. | Shutterstock
The Calamocha-Fuentes Claras observatory recorded a temperature of thirty degrees below zero on December 17, 1963, thus becoming the lowest ever measured in a populated area. Always following the designs of the AEMET (Spanish Meteorological Agency), Calamocha is one of the coldest towns in the peninsula.
Fifty years have passed since that extreme temperature that many will feel unfit for the country was recorded, but things have not changed much since then. During the cold snap of December 2001, in Calamocha had to live with a temperature of twenty degrees below zero. Nowadays, it is difficult to find a winter day when the thermometer reads more than eight degrees Celsius. Frosts are frequent from December to February, months in which it hardly snows.
So winters are, of course, cold. One can visit the Roman bridge and other attractions in the capital of the Jiloca region, in the northwest of Teruel, but the most sensitive to the cold ones might want to think twice. Summers, however, are mild and dry.
q is a prominent town in Guadalajara. | Shutterstock
It has always been said, and rightly so, that the Castilian cold can sting. The icy wind that blows in the center of the peninsula in the winter months has few rivals. Let them tell Molina de Aragón, a municipality in Guadalajara that is considered by many to be the coldest in Spain.
The average of its minimums should be sought in the degrees below zero. During the aforementioned cold snap in December 2001, Molina de Aragón reached twenty-four degrees below zero on Christmas Eve. In a normal January, considered the coldest month of the year, there are usually around twenty-four days of frost. That is to say: Molina de Aragón remains frozen eighty percent of the days. The maximum temperatures, as can be imagined, do not reach ten degrees in the winter months.
Molina de Aragón is, by the way, a beautiful medieval town with hot summers. But beware, when it is hot, it is very hot. So much so that it is not uncommon to see temperatures in the 40s. There is no doubt that it is a place of extremes.
Teruel under a blanket of snow. | Shutterstock
The city of Teruel is barely 900 meters above sea level, but its winters are just as cold. Quite cold, to be fair: minimum temperatures of up to twenty degrees below zero have been recorded. It is the third of the vertices of this triangle that not only includes these municipalities, although it can be considered that these are the maximum representatives of this curious characteristic.
This triangle of ice or cold triangle is considered this way because the whole area is prone to reach these low temperatures, with all the climatic conditions that drag. The environment, you can imagine, is not much different. Being as it is a place of wide horizons, when polar air enters, and it is easy for this to happen, it hits hard.
Other corners of the Spanish geography can be pointed out in which winters can become condemnations, but this ice triangle is considered the coldest of them all. As we have seen, there is no shortage of reasons.
