documentary

Arid Aragón

I’m back in Spain. As a visitor this time, not as a temporary resident. It’s the middle of the summer and temperatures regularly hit 40 degrees Celsius. Aragón, my home region, very often endures the highest temperatures in Spain, even higher than the traditionally scorching, sun-baked Andalucia. In Aragón water, or the lack of it to be precise, shapes the landscape and people’s minds alike.

Natural and man-made water features are the landmarks of the most arid part of Aragón, the desert of Monegros. Long gone are the dark ‘pino negros’, the black pines that the area is named after. Most of them lie on the abyssal seafloor after the ships they helped to build, that infamous Armada Invencible, were sunk in a pitiless battle on the British Channel.

In the crackling mud of moribund water reservoirs and disused wells, in the inconclusive horizons and dusty tracks of Monegros one can find, paradoxically, a bit of British history.