A getaway to celebrate ten thousand years of history in one day

Les GarriguesWhen I was a child, we used to cycle from Les Borges to Cogul, where a man would dip a painted rock to highlight ancient figures from the "Moorish era." The remains of the Moorish Civil War found throughout the mountains make them attractive while revitalizing this place, devoid of people and devoid of even the slightest projects for decades. We propose a tour to discover this still little-known territory.

From oil to wine, from wine to oil

A few years ago, in Albagés, frost damaged the olive trees. Faced with this uncertainty, the Clos Pons winemakers faced a dilemma: either continue or diversify. The winery and mill attract a loyal following to the events they organize, from pairing breakfasts with oil and wine from the same estate to harvest days.

In an almost inverse process, the Cuadrat Valley oil mill was developed to the north. In the Bordeaux area, Patrick Teycheney and his daughter Caroline They left good jobs to dedicate themselves to wine, grown in four castlesHis wife, Evelyne, a clean exile from Albagés, wanted to return to her roots and acquired several properties in the village of Albagés to form Finca Cuadrat, eighty hectares of olive groves, plus a dozen saffron fields and forest. From the mill, within the same estate, the first organic oil flowed in 2021. In a meticulous process, they produced three varieties of extra virgin olive oil that have already received national and international recognition. The awards continue with the building that houses the mill and several rooms for the public. Designed by two architects with roots in Albagés, it won an architecture prize in Paris last year. The dry stone walls and dryland vegetation of the Garriguense make it discreet, while the sinuous overhangs surrounding the trees and the undulating, rounded window add calm to an already silent setting. Eighteen meters below the excavated rock face of the hill are the mill and the winepresses, made of concrete and green steel, which blend with the greenish layer of rock, petrified aquatic vegetation from the sea that covered it. In addition to a visit to the mill and the purchase of oil, in the bright dining room—from which you can see the land from the Pyrenees to the Tortosa-Beseit Passes—we will sample the oil menu, featuring quality dishes and Bordeaux wine.

The flying stone transports us to the Neolithic

From Albagés we go to the Roca de los Moros, in Cogul. The name comes from the human figures painted on the rock, which a hundred or so years ago were dated to "the time of the Moors." They were mistaken by several thousand years, given that the oldest figures belong to the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, between 8,000 and 5,000 years BC. Later, Iberian and Roman inscriptions were added, and others that have not been deciphered.

Once an abandoned and unprotected rock, it is now part of the modern rock art complex of the Roca de los Moros, which includes guided tours and interactive displays. In addition to viewing the original rock paintings (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), the relief reproduction allows visually impaired people to draw them. A large part of the visit revolves around a penis. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the prevailing theory was that the women depicted were performing a phallic dance of fecundity or fertility around a little man with an enormous penis. But the little man and the penis were added (by some joker?) later. A recent theory holds that the women dance, in pairs and adorned with necklaces, as an active part of the tribe, performing the same hunting duties as the men.

While we can access a comprehensive online tour from home—which won the award for best website of a European cultural institution last year—the virtual tasting must be completed at the center itself. Here, another technological innovation awaits us: virtual reality glasses. An immersion through which we'll enter the office of the first Catalan writers and, on a flying stone, travel back 8,000 years, where we'll use our virtual torch to illuminate the figures and make them glow with our hands.

Upon leaving the Interpretation Center, you have another opportunity to purchase extra virgin olive oil from Les Garrigues at the small family business, the Vilà mill. We leave Cogul and head toward land documented only 1,000 years ago, when it belonged to the Templars (later to the Carthusian monastery of Escaladei, and recently abandoned). This is the Mas de Melons Nature Reserve. The few remaining cultivated fields are combined with uncultivated land, and some 1,000 hectares are being reclaimed to form a unique steppe landscape, unique in Catalonia. Twenty botanical trails have already been marked, and 50,000 specimens of rockrose, esparto grass, thyme, artemisia, foxtail, and espernallac have been replanted, which are themselves colonizing new lands. In addition to birds of prey such as vultures, kites, goshawks, and buzzards, the Mas de Melons habitat attracts steppe birds such as the sandgrouse, the codling sparrow, the rock sparrow, the woodpecker, and the executioner.

It's no wonder this biodiversity attracts birdwatchers from all over Europe, and the reserve has been built with four observatories, some of them rather unusual: a half-buried ambush, protected by glass, just a few inches from the pool where they drink. Near the information and exhibition building, we find, carved into the rock, a 12th-century treading stone where grapes were pressed. With binoculars, we head to the Mas de Matxerri viewpoint. Across the vast plain planted with flowering aromatic herbs, we see foxes and eagles circling indifferently. A journey as soothing as being distracted by the sunset on the distant horizon. From the bench made for the occasion, the view spreads out into the slow, chromatic sunset at the end of the long plain. And perhaps something more, if we allow ourselves to be guided by the inscription next to it:Just like the black wheatear does with its mate, we have built this dry stone element to make you fall in love".

The small bird that scares away an airport

The Melons Valley continues its natural course. We will recover it in Timoneda de Alfés, in the Segrià region. The lark forced, not without controversy, the closure of the airfield and the end of the project to convert it into an airport.

The transfer of small planes and aviators made it easier for the abandoned neighboring crop fields to be replanted with species such as thyme (for us rudder, from which Timoneda derives). An arid area, this area will also attract birds to these habitats, some of which are endangered, such as the "break". From the path from the old airfield to the southwest, some remains of a wall mark what was, during the Civil War, an air raid shelter for the then military airfield. Nearby, the buried powder magazine where the bombs dropped by planes, from one side, and later from the other, were stored. It consists of a gallery 34 meters long and four transverse storage galleries. The magazine, which has been converted into a museum, is S-shaped to limit the shock wave in the event of an explosion.

There you have it. Ten thousand years of human history. From cave paintings to electronic paintings, and from modern agricultural activities that have reclaimed abandoned lands in the recovery of natural spaces after agricultural activity was abandoned.