The end of an old year cast me into a portentous frame of mind as I descended a couple of thousand feet down an ancient path through forest, brush and briar to the Pantà de Susqueda: an immense, deep lake created by a dam, 400 feet high, across the gorge of the River Ter in -Catalonia.
You will spot the long, winding, inundated gorge on any map of north-east Spain. Seeing the teeming Costa Brava into which this valley spills through the Ter’s last gorge, you may wonder at how empty is the country behind the portals of that gorge. The map shows no roads or settlements. At night, flying above on your descent towards Barcelona, you will see hardly a light. All is black. It is as though, between the populous interior and the busy coast, the river passes through a sort of no man’s land: a forgotten valley.
For some 30 miles there is nothing. The Ter has disappeared beneath three lakes of which Susqueda is the second, drowning the bottom of a huge, steep-sided valley. On each flank cliffs and mountains rise, and — perversely — there are roads and villages up at the top. But the valley itself, where you might expect the population to be concentrated, is empty.
It was not always thus. Until halfway through the past century, the valley was inhabited and farmed: there were small towns, churches, farmhouses, roads by the river and bridges across. A road followed the valley all the way down. In medieval times the population was apparently much larger, and the valley deforested. But General Franco wanted a store for water for the burgeoning tourist industry on the Costa Brava, and to generate electricity; and in those days there was no argument with government. Everyone was cleared away, and what could be moved was carted off with them. By the end of the 1960s the whole valley had been evacuated. The waters rose, covering the road and most of the villages and farmsteads strung along it; and (the valley being now almost inaccessible except by a rough track) even the settlements above the waterline fell into ruin.
One of these was the tiny riverside village of Sant Martí de Querós, whose high and beautiful medieval stone bridge disappeared beneath the slimy green water more than 40 years ago and now reappears only very rarely, when the reservoir is almost dry. The deconsecrated 11th-century church stands just above the high-water mark abandoned and inaccessible.
I had seen it from the other side of the lake, and wondered. But no, not even a track now reaches Sant Martí. Only straight down the mountains from the top does a little-walked path plunge through the dense woods and undergrowth.
So down we went, my nephew and I, from the ruined 18th-century church of Montdois, perched high above.
It took nearly two hours, a motorable track giving way, finally, to a rough path, marked with the occasional cairn. The path was steep, through a pinewood, over rocks, and among oak and evergreen oak, briar and box, and the strange strawberry trees with bright red edible fruit like tiny plums, still hanging like Christmas baubles. We passed an abandoned settlement, Vilar de Querós, the lake still far below, after which the descent became ever steeper.
It was relentless but the winter’s day was bright, cold and sunny. We didn’t see another human all day. Everywhere was evidence of the wild boar that have reclaimed these mountains: freshly disturbed earth where the pigs had rootled. Sometimes there was a distant crashing among the trees, but you hardly ever see these fearsome-looking but very shy creatures. Wild goats, too, had been visiting: perhaps the descendants of the animals that farmers had once tended. They too kept their distance.
Physically the landscape was spectacular, and lovely, but as we passed Vilar de Querós a solemnity set in. How can I describe this? The collapsing roof of the big house, the outhouses choked with brambles, graffiti scratched onto stone walls … melancholy enough; but for me it was the trees that were saddest. Figs, cherries, sweet chestnuts: only ever found where humans have lived and planted. The people had left two generations ago and, untended, the fruit trees were woody and unkempt, with boughs split by wind and snow, but still clinging on. I suppose trees have no memories, but they will themselves have been memories — and still the childhood memories, perhaps, of a handful of old men and women. I had the strongest feeling that few who were born here will have been able to bear to return.
As we descended, the air grew warmer and the lake closer. We saw the overgrown stone terracing; and, finally, from a ridge, the tower of the church. I experienced a curious aversion to approaching the place: a feeling that we should not have been there.
Externally the church of Sant Martí de Querós is intact, save for a small evergreen oak tree sprouting between the heavy stone flags of its roof. Its pale, stone walls stand well, and its square tower looks upright and strong, but the timbers are cracked and dry. Before too long the roof will fall in.
Inside, the pews and font are gone but the altar stone was still there. There was no vandalism. Because it was there I climbed the rickety staircase to the top of the tower but somehow didn’t want to. We surveyed the bare, ugly, bleached rock exposed by the low waterline, the slimy water, and the small heaps of stone that had once been walls and houses. The ancient bridge — a ghostly white, bony stone structure when it appears — was far beneath the lake. Huge catfish, an intruding, alien species, gulped and plunged in the oily water.
Ruins can be graceful, gripping, awesome; but this — just a forgettable little village, a nowhere-place, never of any consequence — was ineffably sad. A feeling of doom hung over the whole valley.
We rested, turned away from the cursed lake, and began the long climb back.
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