Castro Valnera, a mountain in the Cantabrian mountain range whose north side belongs to the Valles Pasiegos region, in Cantabria.
The first thing that attracts the attention of the traveler who looks out over the Valles Pasiegos is the original structure of its landscape. The valleys are narrow and coquettish, neither as intricate as the Basque ones, nor as wide as the Galician ones. Alongside the rivers that feed them, mansions with plump stone facades and balconies rise up facing south, towards the sun that, in winters, you should always hit the sun.
The buzz of the terraces, squares and bowling alleys It is heard every Sunday in the villas of Pas, human noise that disappears as soon as we ascend towards the slopes of the valleys. There, those who reign are the animals; sheep, Tudanca cows, goats and horses, scattered around the closed meadows that, as if it were a motionless shepherd, are found permanently guarded by a stone hut with a flake roof.
Are thousands of buildings of this type in the Valles Pasiegos, turning the slopes of the mountain into a tide of green pastures that would delight any designer of wallpapers. Such landscape, colors and scale-model villages seem to come from the mind of an inspired decorator.
Cows grazing in the Valles Pasiegos next to a traditional stone hut with a flake roof.
LANDSCAPE AND LIFESTYLE
However, the Pasi landscape is the result of a lifestyle that was maintained in these valleys until the 1980s. In the Pas, Miera and Pisueña valleys, livestock farming has always been the main economic engine, and rare was the family in the pasieguería that was not dedicated to cattle.
Cow care requires adapting to the needs of the animals, always in need of fresh pastures, so the Pasiega family settled on those plots of their property that could guarantee it throughout the year. When the grass was finished, the family carried out the change, moving with all their belongings to another plot without exhausting.
This is how the life of the vast majority of pasiegos until the technification of the field, and the entry of feed and agricultural machinery made the move unnecessary. The film The life that awaits you (Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, 2004), with Luis Tosar and Marta Etura in its beginnings, is a very successful audiovisual testimony of what it was like to live in the Valles Pasiegos before the arrival of “modernity”.
Emigration was also a very popular option in the 1980s, following the path of famous pasiega wives who, throughout the 19th century, nursed the children of the Castilian upper bourgeoisie.
Now, however, nothing remains of the misery that José Manuel Miner Otamendi recounted in his crude work Los pueblo malditos de España (Espasa-Calpe, 1978). The Pasiegos Valleys have known how to conjugate a landscape resulting from a hard and seasoned lifestyle with the benefits that nature itself has chiseled in its valleys . And the result, for the visitor, could not be more spectacular.
The Miera Valley could not be more bucolic.
SAN ROQUE DE RIOMIERA
The road that leads to the source of the river Miera is a succession of curves and stretches worthy of the best tightrope walker, under steep walls where holm oaks do not even grow. The mountains of Miera, with bare limestone peaks, always watch from above, pointing the way to the port of Lunada (1,316m).
The absence of large tree masses on the slopes of the Miera valley It is due to its exploitation for centuries, practically decimating the region's forests for the foundry of cannons in the nearby Real Fábrica de la Cavada, and ships in the Santander shipyards. From the distant years in which wood was the 'gold of Miera', there remains an enormous ramp on the slopes of the port of Lunada, similar to an embankment covered by earth, used to launch logs down the valley, known as the Lunada Slide, and dated in 1791.
Miera River as it passes through the town of Lierganes.
San Roque de Riomera is a tiny nucleus of stone houses presided over by a bowling alley that overlooks the imposing heights of the Cueto de los Cabrones. The town's soccer field is one of the places worth advertising for energy drinks, and the mountain stew of the Vicente restaurant, comparable to the beauty of the landscape. And under the town, next to the Miera, runs a path that leads to Camping Lunada, whose kitchen is an example of the typical dishes of the region: kid, heifer, stew, quesada, cheesecakes...
In the mountains, the diet is forceful because the forces are necessary. From San Roque, we can take a narrow road that leads to the isolated valley of Valdició, where time stopped a long time ago. The enclave is so high up that it was not even touched by the woodcutters of the Castilian kings, and it is the only place in Miera where you can admire centuries-old forests such as the Fernosa beech forest.
Worth climb between cabins, jumping fences of stone and flakes, avoiding the always calm gaze of the cows, up to the Cueto de los Cabrones (1,052 m.a.s.l.). From this easily accessible rock, whose route begins in Valdició, practically all of Cantabria can be admired, from the Picos de Europa to the Asón mountains, and one of the most spectacular sunsets that the autonomous community can provide.
Traditional stone house in San Roque de Riomiera.
For those who, however, prefer to drive after filling their bellies, the best route would be to face the Caracol pass (815 m.a.s.l.), beautiful route that joins the valleys of Miera and Pisueña, and road of vital importance for the articulation of the Valles Pasiegos.
After leaving behind sinuous curves that would delight any cyclist, admiring that Cantabrian green chiseled with silver and emerald tones, we will look at a new Pasiego valley, the one through which the Pisueña River runs. It is this, and no other, the cradle of sobao and quesada, that with so much passion decorate the Casa El Macho and Sobaos Joselín, both from Selaya. However, the sweet comes with the next article: the wild and salty of the Valles Pasiegos remains, hidden, behind the Miera mountains.