Mogarraz
Not to be missed, and the single best reason to spend two days in the sierra instead of one morning in La Alberca.
Three hundred and eighty-eight faces from the village, painted at life size on the houses they lived in.
At a Glance
- — You dislike street art in historic settings — this is the whole village
Mogarraz is a village of dark stone and wooden balconies on a ridge ten minutes from La Alberca, and since 2013 it has had 388 portraits painted on its house facades — photographs from the 1967 identity card files of people from the village, done full size in sepia by an artist who was born here. It sounds like a gimmick and it is not: the faces look down at you from two storeys up, in a village of four hundred people, and the effect is somewhere between an archive and a memorial. There is also a small winery making old-vine Garnacha in the cooperative, and it is quieter than its neighbour by an order of magnitude.
How it got here
Mogarraz sits within the Sierra de Francia, a mountainous zone where settlers from the north of the Iberian Peninsula established villages during the Reconquista. The architecture preserves traditional stone masonry and wooden framing, techniques maintained by the isolation imposed by the surrounding peaks. While the village long relied on agricultural subsistence and silviculture, the modern era brought an artist born in the village who returned to paint portraits of his neighbors based on 1967 identity files. These works remain on the stone facades, creating a permanent visual record of the residents. The village now functions as a record of rural continuity and shifting demographics in Salamanca province.
Where it sits
The village clings to a steep ridge in the Sierra de Francia, surrounded by dense oak forests and chestnut groves. Roads wind through the rugged topography, often requiring slow transit through the narrow mountain passes. Winters bring frequent frosts and occasional snow, while summer heat remains tempered by the high elevation. Unlike the nearby village of La Alberca, which attracts significant tourist volume, Mogarraz keeps a quiet rhythm. The stone houses appear dark against the green slope, and the layout follows the irregular contours of the high terrain, making most streets narrow and challenging for vehicles.
What to eat and drink
The pantry of the Sierra de Francia centers on the pig. Jamón de Guijuelo, cured in the dry mountain air of the province, provides the foundational flavor for local cooking. Hornazo, a dense bread pie filled with chorizo, loin, and hard boiled eggs, persists as the traditional seasonal meal for field work. Kitchens prepare potatoes stirred with pimentón and garlic, a staple accompaniment to locally sourced pork. Small cooperative wineries in the area cultivate old-vine Garnacha grapes on terraced slopes, producing deep red wines that counteract the cold mountain evenings. These dishes reflect a survival culture built on salted meats and hearty forest harvests.
Castilla y León: the whole region
The largest region in Spain, and the one that most rewards a car: a plateau of walled cities, Romanesque churches and vineyards, with Salamanca, León, Burgos and Segovia as four genuine anchors spread across four hundred kilometres. There…
Minimum 5 days · better 8-10 days · deep 2 weeks
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