Maragatería
This week I have vacation. Today is my mental health day. This time, however, my husband convinced me to spend the night, as well. So I am ensconced in a lovely rural pension in the tiny town of Santa Colomba de Somoza in the Maragatería, León. There is an area in the province of León, roughly stretching from Ponferrada to Astorga, that is know as the Maragatería because that is where the Maragatos traditionally lived. These lands are rough and unyielding, so the people that settled here dedicated themselves to being the original truck drivers and transport specialists from the Middle Ages to around the nineteenth century, when the train tracks were finally laid down to Galicia. Every house here has a large portal that originally led to the stables. In them were kept various horses and mules, along with the other farm animals. Those helped them transport their goods from one point of Spain to the other. The most known route, though, led from Betanzos next to A Coruña, to Madrid....