The road that must be taken before arriving at the gorge (“rock defile”, in Catalan) of Mont-Rebei, nestled in the Sierra de Montsec, in Spain, give the the : we follow a long procession between Viella and Puente de Montañana which makes you travel sometimes in Aragon, sometimes in Catalonia. We drive along the edge of the border passing from one region to another, from one welcome to one welcome following each other on the traffic signs. To venture into this spectacular and moving landscape is to tame this refrain, this coming and going, even if you sometimes lose your bearings a bit. « We are close between Catalans and Aragonese, here the linguistic and cultural barrier is porous”, specifies Toni Nievas, the manager of the congost reserve of Mont-Rebei.
Once you arrive at the Masieta car park, the terminus of the car journey, don’t forget to slip a jersey and an old pair of trainers into your backpack before venturing for a few days into the heart of this rocky gorge carved by the impetuous Noguera Ribagorzana river, drawing the border between Aragon and Catalonia. A geological poem as it is easy to imagine the hand of a demiurge who would have had fun cutting in two the impressive ocher and orange limestone wall of 500 meters with, on the Aragonese side, the Sierra du Montsec de l’Estall and, on the Catalan side, that of Ares.
Do not look for bitumen in this isolated and depopulated world, there never was. Or power lines elsewhere. “This part of the Pyrenees is very isolated, the last inhabitants left in the 1960s. Most of the villages are in ruins”, says Toni Nievas. The last of the Mohicans was called Santiago Pena, he lived alone for twenty-five years in Estall, a village that once housed eleven houses and a hundred inhabitants.
In the last century, it was not until the 1920s that a path and a stone bridge took shape at the bottom of the gorges, before being flooded by the immense water reservoir of the Canelles dam, commissioned in 1960. The new congost path of Mont-Rebei was inaugurated in 1982, a part is dug in the wall on the Catalan side, it allows to connect the different villages of the North and the South. But it was not until 2013 that the connection between Catalonia and Aragon was restored, thanks to the aerial footbridges on the Aragonese side and the suspension bridge of Seguer, a structure 36 meters long.
You have to take this spectacular path to reach the Montfalco hostel. A long path strewn with curiosities and dizzying installations allowing you to follow and cross the congost. In the hollow of the wall, one appreciates all the more the disproportionate dimension of the places. After this beautiful notch, the trail becomes easier before venturing onto the Seguer suspension bridge.
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