The colonel’s eyes

The excursion begins and ends in the village of Rasquera. Right next to the church (1) is the Camino de Peçols, the old royal road between Rasquera and Tivenys. You reach the cemetery and continue up. Care must be taken not to get lost in a heavily eroded area (2), where other trails have opened up. Try to turn left and take the road that leads directly to the Rasqueres pass (3).

On the pass is the road that goes up to Cardó and, just crossing it, there are two signs (one is from the Democratic Memorial) and the horseshoe path that goes up directly to the Coll de Pins pass (4). Once there, continue to the left, following the ridge path that goes up to the tip of the Coll de Pins (5), where the observatory is located. Although it is difficult to assume, toponymy experts say that in the past the word neck was also used to identify the highest points. This meaning, common in the Middle Ages, now only survives in Terres de l’Ebre. The expert Jesús Burguenyo states that “in toponymy, things are often not as obvious as they sometimes seem. […] Generations of geographers, hikers, cartographers and scholars of toponymy have been deceived for decades. We looked for passes (mountain passes) where there are actually hills. ”

The light that floods the Coll de Pins is precisely what the character related to it, Colonel Enrique Líster, lacks. Formed in the Soviet Union, when the Civil War broke out he played a prominent role as an officer in the army of the Republic. He ordered the execution of anarchists and Trotskyists in Aragon, and his enemies accuse him of sending the international anarchists and brigadiers under his command to the Battle of the Jarama to a veritable carnage. After the war he went into exile in the USSR where he became a general. He returned to Spain in 1977 and appears to have been paid by the KGB until his death in Madrid in 1994.

The descent follows the path that runs along the ridge and leads directly to the hermitage of Santo Domingo (6), from where it returns to Rasquera. It is worth completing the good taste of the landscape with the famous cakes that are made here.