It was an utterly unexpected sight. Not that I had any preconception of what I might see. By the time we had arrived at this particular height, deep and entirely lost in the hills of Montseny National Park in Catalunia, the sun was beginning to drop, the shadows were lengthening, the scent of the pines intoxicating, and the husband, busy at the wheel of a Ford Transit suited to the motorway and not to mountain tracks, was cursing profusely, and I was beginning to wonder if we might be stranded in the wilderness for the night. Unnerving to say the least, because the lower hills were shrouded in fingers of mist that crept in between the trees, and I had spent an pleasant hour earlier that day reading up on some of the local legends. Add to that the fact that the local police force were heavily armed and scouring the forest for signs of ETA terrorists, I was more than a little nervous.
The neolithic dolmen looks out over a thickly wooded valley and is reputed to have been the meeting place of witches since time immemorial. Local legends include sightings of demonic creatures, and the raising of terrible thunderstorms by witches wanting to keep the uninitiated away from witnessing their diabolic and bloody rites. It is also said that local witch-hunters would execute witches at this site.
If nothing else, the legends amplify the accepted history that these mysterious stone structures are associated with death and burial, and provide a good deal of material for local story-tellers. I have to say, I felt just as spooked by the silence of the place as I was impressed by its antiquity, and the sheer beauty of the surrounding mountains. We were lost when we found this, but it would have been well worth a trek out to see anyway.
