Ciales (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈsjales], locally [ˈsjaleʔ]) is a town and municipality of Puerto Rico, located on the Central Mountain Range, northwest of Orocovis; south of Florida and Manatí; east of Utuado and Jayuya; and west of Morovis.

[2][4] Other sources, such as Manuel Álvarez Nazario and Luis Hernández Aquino, put forward the theory that it comes from the plural of cibales, plural form of ciba, meaning "stony place" or "place of stones" in Taíno, which "had undergone loss of the intervocalic -b- and the addition of the Spanish suffix referring to place -al." Lisa Cathleen Green-Douglass, who carried out a study of toponymics in Puerto Rico and compared both theories, believed the latter to be most plausible since Coll y Toste, per Green-Douglass, must have defined an anagram as a reversal of syllables and the resulting "Cial" or "Cyal" would have to then be made plural.

[5] Edwin Karli Padilla Aponte calls it an "alleged revolutionary uprising" since he finds no official historical record for it, even though it appears in a vignette in the Pueblos Hispanos monthly written by a Gabriel Aracelis, a possible pseudonym for Juan Antonio Corretjer.

Paul G. Miller, Education Commissioner between 1915 and 1921, considered this to be caused by the Seditious Parties (Partidas Sediciosas), gangs of bandits that raided Spaniards' homes in the late-nineteenth century, an idea that Corretjer refuted.

Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017, its eye passing through northeastern Ciales,[8] leaving all municipalities without power for months.

[10] The following December, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced the opening of a disaster recovery center in Ciales to attend the home and business owners, as well as tenants, affected by the hurricane.

[15] Consequentially, the destruction of 508 native planted trees at the Finca Don Ingenio in the Toro Negro Forest Reserve in August 2021 was caused for an uproar.

The trees, which included ceiba and maga specimens, had been planted as part of the Hurricane María recovery by the Puerto Rico Conservation Trust's Para La Naturaleza program.

Since then several investigations have been carried out that have aided in the identification of silex as the main material used by the Taíno for their carving tools and the discovery of ceramic fragments, as well as the theory that the caves were used for rituals, such as cojoba-induced ceremonies.

[17] During his research in the early 1900s, Jesse Walter Fewkes identified the Ciales' caves as some those occupied by the Taíno[18] as well as several of the best preserved sites with their stone-carved implements.

[38] When researching the town's parochial baptismal records historian Fernando Picó found that more than half the offspring baptised at the end of the nineteenth century were born out of wedlock.

The Ciales page lists Museo Juan Antonio Corretjer, Puente Mata de Plátano, and Cascada Las Delicias, as places of interest.

The Fiestas Patronales de Nuestra Señora del Rosario y San Jose is a religious and cultural celebration that generally features parades, games, artisans, amusement rides, regional food, and live entertainment.

[13][52] The coat of arms consists of a gold shield with a lion standing on its rear legs and silver-plated nails grasping a silver coiled parchment between its front claws.

Above the lion in the superior part of the shield are located three heraldic roses arranged horizontally with red petals and green leaves.