Today I invite you to join me on another short stroll along the intricate, yet intense, paths where the trails of memory diverge, and to imagine the essence of a place that has barely changed since those distant times when it was visited by that illustrious poet, the master Don Antonio Machado: Vinuesa.
Located on the border with Burgos and Logroño, and surrounded by extensive pine forests that, in addition to becoming dense thickets in some areas, also conceal and protect magnificent natural features, such as the icy Urbión Peaks that shelter spectacular glacial lakes like Laguna Negra, Vinuesa, known as the capital of the Court of Pines, marks a true landmark among the picturesque places of that beautiful Castilian community known by the Celtiberian name of Soria.
One of the great attractions of this place, whose surroundings are perpetually watered by the borrowed waters of the Cuerda del Pozo reservoir, which, since the not-so-distant 1960s, has sheltered legendary villages like La Muedra in its silty depths, always guarded by the Renaissance tower of its old church rising a few meters above the ashen waters, remains, without a doubt, its beautiful rural architecture.
This architecture still preserves, within the recesses of its ancient walls, the echo of those figures, famous or not, who, for whatever reason, spent the night within them and somehow left a part of their existence in stories that, intertwined with the local imagery, became legendary. Part of this, then, is the presence of these old manor houses or ancestral palaces that still bear the coats of arms of important families who, from the Middle Ages to modern times, increased their wealth and prestige through the profits of the timber industry.
These houses also sheltered figures such as the poet Antonio Machado himself, whose eventful journey—first by stagecoach to Cidones and then on the back of an old donkey—was recommended to him by his friend, the writer Leopoldo Alas, known as "Clarín."
This journey, undertaken in the heart of the Picos de Urbión mountains, sparked in the fevered imagination of the Andalusian poet, then living in Soria, the creative and supernatural tale of the Land of Alvar González: a legendary prose work that, to a greater or lesser degree, describes, like few others, how the beauty of a place can also provoke the most unusual selfishness and the worst crimes.
In short: a visit to Vinuesa is more than just a trip; It is a recreation of visions, memories, and legends, which, combined with its fantastic architecture, provides a unique and distinctive experience.
NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property and are therefore subject to my copyright.
