One day last fall, returning to Asturias from a weekend in Toledo, a city just south of Madrid, a friend and I chose the national highway over the faster, four-lane toll road. We were in no hurry, and we wanted a quieter drive, one that would let us take in the landscape. Near Toledo, the countryside was made up of low hills and wide plains, but the terrain roughened as we reached the Sierra de Gredos, a mountain range in central Spain. The mountains rose high but without the drama of jagged peaks or bold silhouettes, as in the Cantabrian range back home in Asturias. Instead, what struck me was the texture of the rocky slopes and patches of scrub, the mottled color of the land. Asturias is like a house with wall-to-wall carpeting—every surface soft, everything green. Central Spain, in contrast, is like a house with a few throw rugs scattered over rough wooden floors. You see the gaps, the worn boards, the stains and scars. I was enthralled.
Our road wound through the mountains, headed toward the beautiful old walled city of Ávila. In Asturias, the stony peaks rise high above you, but here, the rough terrain felt closer—almost within arm’s reach, just beyond the car window. As we rounded a curve and entered the small village of El Barraco, my friend mentioned that a notorious crime had taken place there. A feud between families, he said—one had ended up massacring the other. “Look it up,” he suggested. But I didn’t have time just then because we were already arriving in Ávila, where we’d planned to stop.
We parked outside the wall at the bottom of a hill, then headed for the nearest portal into the old town. As we passed through, we went from the open hillside outside the wall, where we could see a few car parks and a gas station not far off, into a scene of porticoes and temples, wrought-iron balconies, and walled courtyards. It all felt impressive and beautiful. Just inside the arched entry, the first person we encountered strode past in a belted orange tunic and brown leggings. How perfect! Beyond him were others in period dress, and we soon learned that a Renaissance fair was being held that day. Many of the merchants selling food or wares from booths throughout the old town were in costume, and plenty of the visitors were dressed up, too.
After our initial moment of surprised delight, however, the costumes seemed not so much to enhance the old architecture by adding atmosphere as to detract from it, turning the place into a setting for a fancy-dress party. It felt more artful than artistic. It was all surface. The food and crafts were, after all, the usual mix of clever tourist trinkets and tempting delicacies, both sweet and savory. And besides, when is one ever not tempted? Being tempted, however, does not necessarily prove the value of the tempting delight. What’s more, the tourist life is not something I enjoy—moving from one grand old monument to the next, as if they were merely backdrops for yet another photo. Soon we’d seen enough, and we returned to the car and got back on the road. A few hours later, we were again in our own mountains, topping Pajares Pass in ebbing light and descending into Asturias.
At home, I looked online for the massacre my friend had mentioned. I found nothing about such a crime in El Barraco. But in Puerto Hurraco, a village in Extremadura, a decades-long feud between two families had culminated, on the 26th of August 1990, when two brothers from one family shot and killed nine people, including two young daughters of the other family, playing in the street. Another dozen villagers were wounded.
The enmity between the two families, the Izquierdos and the Cabanillas, had begun in the 1950s with a dispute over property lines. Years later, in 1967, a son of the Izquierdo family stabbed to death a son of the Cabanillas family for jilting one of his sisters. In 1984, while this son was in prison for the murder, his mother died in a house fire, which her children believed had been set by members of the rival family. After serving his sentence, the brother returned and, to avenge his mother’s death, attempted to kill another member of the rival family. This time, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he died shortly after. A few years later, on that fateful evening in August, the two remaining brothers exacted their vengeance.
Both of them were sentenced to long prison terms. One died in prison in 2006; the other hanged himself in his cell four years later. Their two sisters, believed to have been the instigators, were committed to a psychiatric hospital, where both of them died in 2005.
This all happened in Extremadura, the poorest region of Spain in the 1950s and still one of the poorest, among the mountains of that also-splendid landscape. So it was not Barraco, but Hurraco. Not the mountains in central Spain but mountains in the south. It turned out to be not a story with a resolution but merely an end, when the feud claimed all the members of the Izquierdo family, leaving no descendants to carry it forward.
How often do stories end so decisively, so conclusively? Most people muddle along, find half solutions, patch up a rift rather than resolve it. Troubles are more often put off than settled. It’s easy—so easy—to feel dissatisfied with your lot. As we had descended into Asturias, returning to shaggy green mountains and valleys, I reminded myself that, for better or worse, this was the place I had chosen to make my home. Nobody had forced me. I had then—and still have—other options. If you are not outright lucky in your circumstances, you can still learn to accept the situation you’re in. In fact, I believe that it’s your duty to do so.
Later, with the crime in Puerto Hurraco in mind, I returned to that thought. Some people simply will not accept their lot. Often disgruntled, their unremitting sense of grievance sometimes erupts in violent reprisal. If only the jilted sister had reasoned with herself rather than inciting her brothers after the insult of being discarded. It’s not the end of the world, he probably didn’t mean it, maybe he’ll change his mind, maybe someone else influenced him do it. Isn’t there always an explanation, if we want one? An enmity might have remained just that, not a crime but an example of the base feelings such as you find in even the most beautiful places.
Dusk was approaching. As we drove into the deepening gloom, I had looked around me. In the night, goes a Spanish refrain, all cats are brown. Beware, in other words, of vagueness, murkiness, or anything inhibiting clear-sightedness. All cats are brown and all landscapes dark and mysterious. All around me, the mountainsides and valleys seemed to billow out. I saw an unfolding bolt of dark green velvet. This too is enchanting, I told myself.
