El Espíritu

El Espíritu sits at 1,860 metres above sea level in the Alfajayucan part of the Mezquital Valley. The land is hills and plain, in the Llanuras y Sierras de Querétaro e Hidalgo subprovince, and its water drains to the Alfajayucan River sub-basin of the Moctezuma basin. The climate is semi-dry and temperate.

The 2020 census counted 593 people in 149 occupied homes, 3.09% of the municipality. The census series is uneven: 318 residents in 1900, only 72 in 1910, 317 in 1921 and 249 in 1940; then between 208 and 234 through the 1950s to 1970s, and growth from 1980 to 565 in 2000, a dip to 387 in 2005 and a recovery to 557 in 2010. Marginalisation is rated medium and social lag very low.

Around the village is Mezquital farmland: the municipality plants maize on about 4,830 hectares, with pulque maguey (800 hectares), green chile (520) and alfalfa as other mainstays. The seat's name comes from Nahuatl and is read as a place where water willows grow. A road toward Zimapán runs beside the village; Wikimedia Commons holds a photograph of it taken about 120 metres from the village's map point.

The best-known sights of this corner of Hidalgo lie elsewhere in the municipality: the Presa Vicente Aguirre, under whose water the parish church of San Antonio Corrales was sunk in 1950, and the rock paintings of San Antonio Tezoquipan, visited with a guide.