The ineffable sadness of Franco’s ruins

The end of an old year cast me into a portentous frame of mind as I descended a couple of thousand feet down an ancient path through forest, brush and briar to the Pantà de Susqueda: an immense, deep lake created by a dam, 400 feet high, across the gorge of the River Ter in -Catalonia.

You will spot the long, winding, inundated gorge on any map of north-east Spain. Seeing the teeming Costa Brava into which this valley spills through the Ter’s last gorge, you may wonder at how empty is the country behind the portals of that gorge. The map shows no roads or settlements. At night, flying above on your descent towards Barcelona, you will see hardly a light. All is black. It is as though, between the populous interior and the busy coast, the river passes through a sort of no man’s land: a forgotten valley.

For some 30 miles there is nothing.