Giant turned into a top, the Puigmal is the only vestige of an ancient story of Catalan about the passage of nomadic life of glaciations to the implementation of livestock in a warmer world. Located between the municipal terms of Queralbs, in the region of the Ripollès and the communal of Err, in Alta Cerdanya, and with 2,910 meters high, it rises as the highest peak of the large pot that surrounds the Valley of Núria and the second in the province of Girona. Its undulating crest acts as a natural border between Spain and France. Thus, one of the four recommendations made by the country this summer for mountain lovers around Catalan geography.
Although Catalan mythology is not widely known, the great poet of the nineteenth century in Catalonia, entered the Los Veranos Pyrenean mountain range of 1882 and 1883 as an inspiration to crystallize its great epic poem Canyon. In his journey crowned peaks as symbolic as the Carlit, the Aneto, the Pica d’E status or the one that gave name to the work, but among its 4,000 verses there was room for references to the legends of the Puigmal.
Linked to the gods that transmit wisdom, to protect fauna and eradicate hunger among men, Puigmal taught them to milking and make cheeses. The legend says that, when the hunting ceased, beasts and people, they lived without fear until the day that the “hunter” was revealed atavistic instincts and unearthed weapons, but there are still people who strive to recover that old harmony. And it is that the Catalan Pyrenees is known for being a meeting point not only physical, but also cultural, and especially the, where French and Catalans have lived for centuries after the region was divided into two by the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659.
The top can be reached from different points. The classic route, which begins in the Sanctuary of Núria; From Fontalba, in Queralbs; or from planols by the Collet of Les Barraques. But only one of the promotions starts from the Err’s Ribera Valley, on the French side.
The route begins at 1,800 meters, just at the foot of the Telesilla of the already abandoned ski resort that after nine years of unsuccessful attempts to reopen, definitely closed its doors in 2023 unable to pay off its debts. Once there, a path begins this that borders the course of the Ribera de Er and that, oblivious to the, always runs generous in its journey through the Aiguaneix valley. In this first section, the echo of the marmotes that run between shrubs confuses the hikers, who usually raise the view to heaven in search of some broken vulture.
The water course leads to a small fissure in the rocks, at 2,000 meters, from where the water that derives from the birth of the Segre river springs, on the other side of the valley, in the west, in the Collado de Finnetrelles. At this point, green begins to dissipate and the Dolomitas rocks go on to draw a Martian landscape that reminds them of Stanley Kubrick or JRR Tolkien films.
It is then that the Valley twisters west by a defendant track between the rock quarries until you reach the bottleneck that make up the three summits that crowns the voluptuous solid. To the west, the Puigmal de Llo (2,800 meters), a peak that stands out among the undulations for its pronounced fang -shaped appearance. And to the east, the Pico del Segre (2,843 meters), halfway from the last top. There the lungs decide, but the option of tracing the crest to the Grand Cruz de Hierro that crowns the Puigmal offers a monumental landscape next and side of the border, where Verdaguer mastery immortalized with mastery the way in which the horizon widens in the heights:
From Puig in Puig by the Coll de Finestrelles
they are threaded from Puigmal to the high top;
all the earth that my heart loves
From here you see in mountain ranges wave:
Olot and Vic, Empúries and Girona,
And there, in the heart of the Spanish mark,
Montserrat, of four sticks with boat
that from the East the pearl comes to us.
After an last hour of promotion by a sea of rocks and a total of 1,200 meters of positive slope, the great iron cross adorned with the pot that represents the Núria Valley, already its feet, a plaque that reads some verses of the Catalan poet:
The old Puigmal
of rabassuda shoulder
is the Arch of this haughty fortress,
than in seven hundred years
The Saracen has not taken.
Before retaining what is walking and concluding five hours of route, it is worth contemplating the panoramic view, which leaves anyone indifferent. If the dense cloudiness that usually accumulates suddenly in the upper part of the mountain dissipates and the wind amaine, sometimes the sacred mountain of Montserrat, the sharp mountain of the Cadí or even the Collserola tower that Corona Barcelona can be southeast. And northeast, the PIC of the infern, the Canigó or the Balandrau, where Verdaguer put his gaze to put an end to his tribute to the mountain range.
