To say a name has survived from the Iberians is to reach back past every empire that shaped this coast. The Contestani were here when the whole region answered to no state at all, and their name has clung to this spot through Roman, Visigothic, Muslim, and Christian rule alike. The cave paintings in the surrounding hills push human presence back even further, into the deep prehistory of the Paleolithic. Cocentaina, in other words, is not an old town so much as an old place that happens to have a town on it, one of the oldest continuously inhabited spots in the Valencian mountains.

Under Moorish rule the settlement was called Qustantaniya, and it mattered. This was an important enclave in Al-Andalus, and the imprint of those centuries is still legible in the streets. The foundations of the castle, the tangled layout of the old quarter, and the scattering of alquerias, the fortified farmhouses that dot the countryside, all date from that Islamic period. Walk the historic center and you are tracing lines drawn by medieval Muslim hands, a street plan that outlasted the people who first paced it. Few Spanish towns keep their Al-Andalus bones so close to the surface.

Cocentaina's calendar turns on two great celebrations, both born in the Middle Ages and both declared Festivals of National Tourist Interest. One is the Moors and Christians, whose thundering Alardo of gunpowder and pageantry reenacts the region's founding conflicts. The other is the Fira de Tots Sants, the All Saints' fair, a sprawling autumn market descended from a medieval trading fair that still fills the town every year. Between them they bracket the year with noise, color, and crowds, drawing visitors from across the province and giving this small town a reputation far larger than its population would suggest.

The town's grandest interior belongs to the Palau Comtal, the Palace of the Counts, whose crowning glory is the Sala Daurada, the Gilded Room, its ceiling worked into intricate, golden splendor. It is the kind of space that reminds you Cocentaina was once the seat of a noble house with money and ambition to match. Nearby, the recently restored castle keeps its square tower on the ridge above. Palace below and fortress above, the two together sketch the shape of the medieval order that governed this valley: power that lived in comfort and power that watched the road.

For all its history, Cocentaina is first and foremost a working town, and its trade is textiles, an industry that has clothed the region for generations. That industrial past also flavors its most local drink. Like neighboring Alcoy, Cocentaina is known for café licor, a coffee liqueur with roots in the early 13th century that spread when factory workers spiked their coffee thermoses to get through long shifts. You will find it poured neat or mixed with orxata, soda, or lemon, a small daily ritual that ties the modern factory town back to its medieval beginnings, one glass at a time.