Enclave ODS A journey through the forgotten paths of Spain: "They are part of the history of our ancestors"
Barely a few stones resist today in what is known as the Juansomera, an old farmhouse located a few kilometers from the town of Paterna del Madera (Albacete) in which up to four families once lived. One of them was that of Antonio López, 75, who remembers how as a child he descended from the family home down a steep dirt road until he reached the river. There, he explains, they collected water from a spring that still remains. The house did not suffer the same fate and was reduced to ruins after its inhabitants left the district to move to the municipality. The path also stopped being walked and now remains semi-hidden by lush vegetation. But not for long.
Soon, the path will be cleared and cleaned so that the hundreds of runners registered for the Osera Marathon can pass, a mountain race that will be held in May in the mountains that surround Paterna del Madera for the second consecutive year. “At the time of drawing up the route we have tried to add some routes that were used before and that are now neglected. We want people to get to know them and come to train for them so that they can be preserved again”, details Floren Camacho, one of those in charge of designing the itinerary.
To do this, they have used the memories of locals like López -also coordinator of the race-, although practically the entire circuit is part of the Red de Senderos Verdenace, a set of 20 historic paths that the association located and rescued almost two decades ago. local Friends of Paterna del Madera, founded expressly for the task.
Aerial view of the municipality of Paterna del Madera, in AlbaceteNational Geographic Institute Screenshot
"Our goal was to recover paths, paths, ravines and tracks that traditionally linked the town with the rest of the neighboring towns and that were about to be lost," explains Antonio Torres, the association's first president. A task for which the local population participated. "We asked the older people of the place and a shepherd, for example, told us where to go before to the Tejo Viejo, a hundred-year-old tree that was very difficult to access," he details.
Subsequently, with the help of maps from different years provided by the National Topographic Institute, the routes were traced which, compass in hand, were then followed and marked out on the ground. “The last step was to clear them, clean them and mark them with the international signage to be able to obtain homologation”, concludes Torres. The result is nearly 265 kilometers of official routes (and digitized so that they do not disappear again) that have ended up becoming a first-class tourist resource in a town of just over 300 inhabitants.
Hiking to revitalize the rural world
The networks of signposted trails that expand throughout the country have shown that they are a socioeconomic boost in the rural areas where the routes pass. And it is that, beyond facilitating the celebration of specific events such as mountain races, the rest of the year they promote hiking, an activity that is estimated to be practiced regularly by between four and five million Spaniards (10% of the population).
Currently, there are no official figures on the socioeconomic impact of hiking at the national level. However, in 2003, after a decade of public investment, the Huesca Provincial Council carried out a pioneering study on the economic profitability of this sport with low environmental impact. The findings indicated that not only had there been positive growth in investment, but that "hiking had significant income and employment impacts on the economy in general and, specifically, on the local economy receiving visitor spending."
Beyond being a powerful driver of the rural world, the emergence of hiking as a widespread hobby in recent times has allowed the recovery of traditional routes that were doomed to disappear. Something that, according to José María Nasarre, vice president of the Spanish Federation of Mountain and Climbing Sports (FEDME) and head of the study Signposted trails and sustainable rural development, allows revaluing an irreplaceable cultural heritage. "The paths are part of the history of our ancestors and mountain sports such as trekking, trail running, cycling and even horse riding are an opportunity to rehabilitate them and for the local population to use them again," he says.
Normally, maintains the vice president of FEDME, the disused roads are recovered thanks to the initiative of local associations, municipalities or private groups. However, since 1993 the Network of Natural Paths has been under development, dependent on the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and made up of more than 10,300 kilometers of old abandoned infrastructure, such as, for example, the old railway platforms that have now become Greenways.
A woman is trekking in the mountains leszekglasner iStock
In this sense, Nasarre recalls the public nature of these traditional roads: "Article 132.1 of the Spanish Constitution includes the imprescriptibility of public roads, which means that, even if they have been abandoned, roads have been built on top of them or they have been usurped by private owners continue to exist and remain in the public domain.
Protected by the legal framework, the Iberian Platform for Public Roads has been fighting for 15 years to recover these lost roads. "When we let a path disappear, we lose public heritage and the historical memory of those who have walked there and have even collaborated in the maintenance of that area is lost," says Manolo Trujillo, coordinator of the organization, which includes about 30 local associations across the country.
Encouraging city councils to prepare their catalogs of public roads is one of the main lines of action of the platform, which collaborates in the search for and study of historic roads. As Trujillo explains, to carry out this work the photographs of the “American flight” are still a fundamental tool today. It refers to the aerial images that in 1956 and 1957 fifty American Army Map Service pilots made of the entire peninsula as part of a cartographic project promoted by Spain and the United States.
The orthophotographs, currently digitized by the National Geographic Institute (IGN) and the National Geographic Information Center (CNIG), are one of the few historical aerial resources currently available that allow, among other things, to identify traditional trails.
"Thanks to these images we have been able to see how some hunting or private farms had appropriated roads that are in the public domain and, insisting a lot, we have managed to reopen them," Trujillo details, adding that, on other occasions, the work of recovery have been carried out on the ground, since to rehabilitate a road you first have to walk it, clear the brush and, of course, clean up the rubbish and waste.
A way to protect the environment
Beyond the impact of cleaning and maintaining a road, in the long term, its recovery seems like a way to protect the natural environment. “What is not known is not valued or protected. For this reason, if today you recover a natural area, people begin to travel and appreciate it and, if tomorrow some initiative wants to urbanize it, it is most likely that the population will mobilize to protect it”, argues Trujillo.
For David Gutiérrez, director of the Technical Office for Environmental Sustainability of the Cantabrian Network for Rural Development, there are multiple benefits that the rehabilitation of paths implies for the natural environment. The most direct? That offers security to the people and animals that live in the area. "When you guide the passage of people along certain paths, you prevent people from going through areas, either dangerous or sensitive, where there are protected species of fauna or flora or species breeding," he clarifies.
Likewise, the creation of natural pathways allows wildlife to continue to pass through, which increasingly encounters more artificial barriers, such as roads, meshes or retaining fences. "That is why it is important that before laying out a path and making it accessible, the territory and the characteristics of the environment and the infrastructure to be built are studied," says the expert. And he concludes: "Only in this way is it possible to respect nature to the fullest."
