Picasso Way

In the spring of 1906, the painter Pablo Picasso, encouraged by a friend who knew the village, settled in Montclar. For two and a half months, the people and landscapes of this corner of Berguedà inspired the artist's work.

The journey of the Málaga genius was also due to the arrival of the steam train in Guardiola in 1904, before the road was built. But from Guardiola to get to Montclar, one still had to take the royal road, the rough path of medieval origin, since there was no road (the first car that arrived at the square of Montclar did so in 1942).

Fernande Olivier, who accompanied Picasso on that trip, recounted in her memoirs the impression that the path made on her: "To get there, one had to take a journey of several hours on a mule, along paths surrounded, on one side, by a vertical rock wall that brutally battered hands and knees, while on the other side, a precipice forced us to close our eyes to overcome the vertigo. Those precipices did not disturb the mules in the least, they were prudent, and one could trust them. At one precise moment, I felt the saddle loosening and dangerously crumbling backward. Surprisingly, the muleteer, once alerted, came to adjust the saddle, the mule, and me." In the summer of 1906, Fernande Olivier and Picasso left La Plata through the Paso de los Gosolans, heading to Paris, with the rolled canvases secured on the back of a mule.

Description:

The path starts at the Guardiola de Berguedà station, passes by the Sant Llorenç monastery near Bagà, and leads to the Coll dels Fangassos through an impressive steep pass, descends to the Campllong valley, crosses the river by a wooden bridge, passes by the Castellot and the Molí de Bosoms, crosses the torrent by a bridge from the mining era, and emerges at Els Hostalets of the royal road.

From here, the path passes near Cal Coix and climbs resolutely to the church of Sant Julià de Fréixens. It continues to ascend afterward, more gently, towards Cal Francesc, leaves the chapel of Sant Antoni aside, and emerges at Cal Susèn, in the envy of Maçaners and the Carrilet, whose silhouette will not abandon us throughout the journey.

In Maçaners, we can quench our thirst at the fountain. The path continues towards Molers, passes by the Sull house (of medieval origin), reaches the village (where there is a fountain), continues below the Serra de Baix, and emerges on the coal road (a dirt track that in the 1940s had already replaced the royal road), leading to the Molí de la Palanca, over the Agua Salada.

The path heads towards Campllong, crosses the village, continues towards the neighborhoods of Cardina and El Serrat, crosses the Riudarenes road and takes the ancient royal road of Feners and L'Espà.

The restored path climbs through the clayey cliff of Coll de la Trapa and descends to the torrent to find the old path to Montclar along the shady side. Here we find a spectacular and striking desert landscape caused by an outcrop of eroded clays forming terraces and gullies due to the absence of vegetation. The violet, reddish, and ochre tones of the rocky outcrops dominate the landscape. It seems quite clear that Coll de la Trapa inspired Picasso, as these are the colors that characterize the pictorial work done in Montclar.

After the pass, the path goes below the current road and crosses the villages of L'Espà and Sorribes, where we can make a stop. From Sorribes, the path rises to the Coll del Cap de la Creu, already in the shadow of Montclar, where the painter arrived at the end of May 1906.

The painter departed twelve weeks later by the path known as the Camí dels Segadors since it is the same path used by the gosolans to go to cut the harvest in the valleys of La Cerdanya during the summer.

The path leaves the village of Sanaüja heading north –following the yellow and white marks of PR 124 until past the village of Nas– along a stony slope from where one quickly dominates the entire valley of Sanaüja and a good part of the course of Agua de Valls and the Ensija mountain range; and reaches the pass of Font Terrers, with the homonymous fountain.

The path continues towards the Pla del Martí and gently climbs until it finds the torrent of La Coma de Caners –from where the path goes up to Carrilet by the Verdet–. Here, the path begins to ascend through the woods in some coastal stretches that lead to cross the ridge of La Portella by the Cap de la Portella.

After the pass, the forest becomes increasingly clearer until it turns into a meadow that we flank towards the east with the Cerneres valley to the north and northwest. One passes by the fountain of la Roca and arrives at Collell. This pass is the watershed between the Llobregat, through the valley of Gresolet and the Segre, through the valley of Cerneres.

The path –now a forest track closed in winter and quite trafficked by vehicles in summer– reaches the Pla de les Bassotes. The name of the place comes from the abundant number of water pools found scattered around that always have more or less water and serve to water the livestock.

One leaves the track to follow the path that rises through the flat area in the direction of north and initiates an ascent towards the Prat Toixonés, the Costa del Clot dels Moros, the Prat Socarrat until reaching the top of the Pedregosa mountain range where the path starts to flank towards the Clot de Palomar where a last slope places us at the Pas dels Gosolans, between the rounded summit of Comabona to the east and the jagged series of the northern slope of the Cadí mountain range, sharp and torn. In the background, one can already see the Prat d'Aguiló where one accesses some stony platforms that zigzag through the northern end of the mountain range.

From the refuge, the path descends along a busy track –especially in summer– until the collado del Hombre Muerto where the path recovers old interlinked routes towards the Eras, the Mala Tierra, and the Llanuras de Herederos to reach the villages of Nas and Pi, already in the valley –from just before arriving in Pi, the path is marked with the red and white signs of GR 150 until Talló–. In this last village, the old blacksmith's workshop has become a small interpretative center, self-guided, where one can see how iron was worked in bygone times. And who knows if Picasso himself stopped to repair a damaged horseshoe of the horses that had taken them to cross the Cadí! From here, the path reaches Talló and Bellver, the endpoint of the route.