A place with a spell: the Black Lagoon of the Picos de Urbión

'After riding two hours we reached the Muedra, a village halfway between Cidones and Vinuesa, and a few steps we crossed a wooden bridge over the Duero ...'.
These simple, but relevant phrases are part of that story-legend, which under the title of The Land of Alvargonzález, that great poet and above all, good man who was Antonio Machado, dedicated him to a place as special as this Laguna Black of the Peaks of Urbión.

Interestingly, it seems that such an attractive story, saw the light for the first time in the number 9 - they say that this number not only represents the Hermit, in the Tarot cards, but also the experts in numerology augur intellectual achievements to their holders- the Parisian magazine Mundial, published in January 1912. If it were not for the fact that in the forties or fifties of the twentieth century the creation of a swamp was decided, which bears the curious name of Cuerda del Pozo, it would also be said in this case, that As in Calatañazor, Saturn passed by without barely stopping.

It is a pity, therefore, to say that some of the places that Machado mentions in his story no longer exist. Or rather, continue to exist, as witnesses of the nonsense, in the depths of the swamp. It would be the case, for example, of the town of the Muedra, the tower of whose church it excels at times, when the water level is low enough, like an accusing finger crying out for justice to its executioners.

For the rest, and if it were not for the asphalt of the main roads that come from Vinuesa and Vinuesa, they leave for the Laguna Negra and the port of Santa Inés, in the direction of the border with La Rioja, anyone who goes through those lonely extensions of pine forests -no wonder that the area is known as the Tierra de Pinares, having precisely Vinuesa, the category of Villa y Corte-, would think that it is still less the same as when the parricides children of Alvargonzález loaded with the corpse of his father to throw him into those waters, whose background is not known and where they also tell the stories of the old-the old, could perfectly be here the Iberian Peninsula itself, which has stories and special places like this to bore, that dwells a lonely lady of the waters, who every night brushes her hair with a gold comb, while sighing looking at the moon.

Like all the glacial lagoons of its kind, the Black Lagoon can be said to be a poem: an almost perfect oval that, as said another great Hindu poet, Rabindranath Tagore, was not chiselled by the hammer and chisel, but by the sweet song of the water. In addition, it is located at a very specific point, on the border that, apart from La Rioja, matches Soria with that old Castilian comadre, which is Burgos. And in just a short route of a few kilometers, connects with other glacial lagoons no less fantastic and of a singular beauty: those of Neila.

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