Bosc Orrius
A traveling cliché says that we end up getting to know the really far away places than those we have close to home. In the case of Spain , a country with beautiful landscapes and a history thickened by an intense cultural miscegenation over the centuries, this traveling truth is especially flagrant.
Here we have historical monuments, spectacular and diverse natural landscapes , and cities and towns with a deep soul that wait for us for years, sometimes decades, frustrated, without managing to capture our attention.
That is the case of the Òrrius forest, a place where the word “ Magic ” takes on different meanings and none of them will leave you indifferent.
The municipality of Òrrius is located about 40 kilometers north of Barcelona , bordering the Roca del Vallés and Argentona to the north, Cabrils to the southwest and San Ginés de Vilasar to the southeast. It is a quiet place, with no more than 700 inhabitants who live oblivious to almost everything in low houses that swirl around the church of San Andrés, an emblematic example of late Gothic that has been watching life go by for almost 600 years.
One of the most enigmatic places in Catalonia
the solid church stones They are not, however, the ones that most attract the attention of those who decide to spend the day in Òrrius, far from the hustle and bustle of Las Ramblas in Barcelona. And it is that, in the forest near the town, it is not Gaudí who came to chisel the stone to create modernist silhouettes.
Instead, a mysterious character, an anonymous sculptor, he worked the rock during the 50s of the last century to create an elephant, a moai and an Indian. Nobody knows why he did it, and nothing like ignorance to cement legends and rumors about a place that treasures more attractions to earn the epithet of "magical".
Thus, although most people who visit the Òrrius forest do so only to admire the stone sculptures that are a few meters from the car park, the truth is that the place offers a beautiful Prehistoric Route , duly signposted, which runs through many other points of interest while you enter the typical thickness of the Mediterranean forest.
The entire route is no more than 12 kilometers and is suitable for anyone. As you walk along this path, you will see appearing, among the tall stone pines, the Cellecs Dolmen , an ancient burial mound from the end of the Neolithic that is more than 4,000 years old.
Although today a large part of the gallery has disappeared and only the cover slab, the header and the lateral ones remain, it is believed that the original passageway must have been about two meters long, and the tumulus about eight meters in diameter. . Some ceramic remains were recovered from its interior and the countrymen murmur that here they still make some witchcraft rituals, citing as evidence the appearance of animal viscera in the surroundings.
And it is that there are not a few who believe that the forest of Òrrius emanates esoteric energy. At night, only the most daring venture down its paths, seeking to meet the goblins and witches who seem to take over everything as darkness falls. Some claim to have heard voices coming from the thicket, while others say they have seen lights here and there.
Who surely was not afraid of all those legends and myths, was the bandit Perot Rocaguinarda. This kind of Catalan Robin Hood of the fifteenth century was dedicated to rob the unsuspecting rich who traveled through this area. He says the legend that the Rock of the Crosses , another of the stops on the route through the forest of Òrrius, is marked by each cross that the outlaw made after eliminating each of his victims. Whether true or not, Perot Rocaguinarda was forever immortalized by the pen of the great Cervantes in the second part of The Quijote. There, he appeared under the name of Roque Guinart.
A little further on, another rock, called Stone of the Orenates (Piedra de las Golondrinas), hides, behind its nest form, a series of paintings.
However, this mix between the esoteric, the historical and the natural reaches its peak in the three figures carved in rock by that anonymous sculptor. The end of the circular route returns us to that area where the three monoliths they look at us with a vacant look… Impassive.
Scholars of esotericism comment that the fact that the face of the Indian is engraved on the back of the moai, similar to the famous ones on Easter Island, is no coincidence. Interconnections with ancient religions and the Roman god Janus -deity of doors, beginnings, portals, transitions and endings, who was represented with two faces, looking at both sides of his profile-, supported by the figure of the elephant, a symbol of protection and good luck in various cultures Asian.
Ancient fires here and there suggest, too, the making of covens … At least, for the most imaginative minds.
Be that as it may, the truth is that a day in the Òrrius forest is a perfect getaway from the hustle and bustle of Barcelona, culminating in a grilled tasting of sausages, vegetables and meat from this land at the restaurant Cal Tatano of Orrius. And they say that esotericism whets the appetite.
Bosc Orrius