Castilla y León is an autonomous community I hardly knew at all. Although I had crossed it a few times on my way to Madrid and visited some of its cities, Ávila, Segovia, Salamanca, León, and so on, I always traveled by highway, and the image I had of it was very poor and full of clichés. I imagined it as an immense, flat, arid, and dry land where, honestly, I couldn’t picture myself living. But this year I’ve started to truly discover it, and although I’ve only scratched the surface, I have to admit it has completely stolen my heart.
The first step in getting to know a place is stepping off its highways. The only way to see what’s really there is to slowly venture into it, travel its secondary roads, the more secondary, the better. You have to take your time, stop to take in the horizon, and feel the urge to see what lies beyond. That’s exactly what I’ve started doing, and every day I get the chance to walk that land, I’m more and more amazed by its beauty, by the variety it holds, the character of its villages and landscapes, the raw power of its nature, and the vastness of its territory. It’s a great unknown, with absolutely stunning potential.
The photograph that accompanies this text was taken in Candín, a village I discovered while descending from the Ancares mountains in León. It’s not the most beautiful or picturesque photo I’ve taken of the area, but it’s the one that best captures the sense of discovery I’ve been experiencing on these trips. After a long day, more than a roll of film full of images, and many hours behind the wheel, I was about to head home when a landscape full of blooming shrubs, intertwined with twisted, dried-out logs, made me stop the car and keep exploring. Even though I had to fight my way through the undergrowth to find the right composition, it was the path itself and the time I spent wandering that truly made it worthwhile. As always, it’s the experience that matters most, that’s what truly gives meaning to the photograph.
