TE19 Iberian Adventure

Manuel Astur

of the night while everyone was sleeping. Bullets were whistling around them, so many that they decided to make a run for the forest. When they finally arrived at La Cuevona, their mother was frightened because her daughter was covered in blood. But she was reassured to find that the bullet had only grazed the baby’s temple. A hair to one side and it would have killed her. A hair to the other and it would have killed her sister. “It was a miracle,” she says, and tosses her hair back, smoothing it down with a deft movement. “So, you see: I was born then, and so was my sister. We were born at the same time.” What she does know is that she wasn’t born here. Sofia was born in San Andrés del Monte, about seven hours’ walk east. Past the four houses that make up the village of La Condesa. Beyond even the Guanga sierra. A sun-soaked village on the slope of Mount Bueymuerto. A good village that even has an Indian-style stately mansion, a church, and, of course, a bar, but all three are in ruins and eaten by undergrowth, as it has been thirty years since the last inhabitant died. And now it is a ghost town because, since it was uninhabited and therewere no voters, no politician bothered turning the dirt track into a road or bringing electricity there, thus condemning it to dissolve with the Old World: once more between two fronts. Sofia is the only survivor. Every summer Sofia starts walking and does not stop until she reaches her village. It’s incredible, given that her back is so crooked that when she walks it looks like she’s tilling. But any of the hikers who arrive at San Andrés del Monte from time to time will have seen her with their own eyes. The cemetery is in ruins. A wing of niches collapsed long ago, exposing the squares like a 206