Flight paths from northern Europe into Madrid tend to pass over the Sierra de Guadarrama, and airline passengers visiting for the first time are often surprised to encounter such a vast mountain range so close to the city. Where they might have expected to see a flat, dry plain below, they find themselves instead commencing their descent above dramatic, snow-dusted summits, shivering pine forests, and deep blue lagoons.
Seven particular peaks, the Siete Picos, appear to take the shape of a slumbering dragon. Local legend tells of that winged creature circling the world in search of magical waters that would give him eternal life, and finding them right here in the natural pools of Cercedilla. On drinking its fill, the dragon was duly turned to stone and sent to sleep forever, the vertebrae of its spine forming the rocky contours of what was once known as the Sierra del Dragón.
Today, the dragon’s domain is bounded within Sierra de Guadarrama National Park that was established in 2013. The mythical monster shares a vast habitat of almost 34,000 hectares with more than 255 living species: rare frogs and butterflies, red deer and wild boar, and even the packs of wolves, which recently returned to these high hunting grounds after vanishing from the Sierra for 70 years.
The airspace overhead has also seen the slow, steady revival of protected bird species, which were once on the verge of extinction. Some 200 mating pairs of black vultures have come to colonize the Scots pines of the Rascafría Valley, their numbers boosted in large part by active efforts of conservation groups like the Spanish Society of Ornithology (SEO/Birdlife).
Such enclaves are also ideal for nesting birds of prey, says SEO citizen science coordinator Juan Carlos del Moral, “with big wooded areas and rocky walls, and large plains in the vicinity where there are good rabbit populations.” Those rabbits have their own part to play in sustaining the mighty Spanish imperial eagle. Desperately endangered a few decades ago, these beautiful predators can now be seen in much healthier numbers dropping from the heights to stalk the plateau.
“Watching large eagles and vultures fly is always a pleasure,” says Juan Carlos, “but the sounds made by these birds and others, hearing their songs… that’s more important to me, and gives much more information. Walking in the countryside we might see a few birds, but we can hear dozens and dozens, many more species than can be seen with the naked eye.”
A decade-plus of national park status, he says, has simply meant “fewer conservation problems” for his organization and others, with human activity restricted for minimal disruption to wildlife. At the same time, the park now allows for fuller interactions between the citizens of Madrid and the biosphere on their doorstep. Visitor centers, hiking routes and nature trails range across the multiple different ecosystems, from the glaciated reaches of its tallest peak, Peñalara, to the oak groves and wetlands at lower elevations.
An hour by car out of the capital, more or less, a summer day-tripper can escape the city heat to swim in landscaped natural pools at Las Berceas or Las Presillas, while winter snows draw skiiers to a cluster of resorts on the rugged frontier of provincial Madrid. Valdesqui is the closest, and rises highest above sea level, laced with just over 13 miles (22 kilometers) of pistes in a region that few outsiders would ever associate with such sports.
This is rock-climbing country, too, of course, and La Pedriza has a peculiar appeal because it looks like another planet altogether–eons of wind, water, grinding ice and chemical action have sculpted the granite into otherworldly shapes to clamber over like an interstellar explorer. Our ancestors also made lasting marks on this landscape. Archaeologists from the University of Madrid have excavated various sites they believe were settled by Celtic Vettone tribes long before the Romans ever came this way. The ruins show how they carved pagan altars out of this rock, building steps and platforms into the surface of the mountains.
Later legends have imposed themselves on those ancient earthworks. One configuration is known as La Silla de Felipe II, or Philip II’s Chair, because the king is said to have used it as a kind of throne from which to oversee the construction of his vast royal palace, monastery, and necropolis complex at San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Then a long day’s ride on horseback from Madrid–the newly-appointed capital of his kingdom as of 1561–this site at the foot of Mount Abantos was chosen for its proximity to such abundance of pine and granite.
Those materials were quarried and cut to raise the largest Renaissance building in the world, its latticed layout apparently modelled on ancient descriptions of the Temple of Solomon. Today’s resident monastic community allows the public to tour its halls, chapels and gardens, though the monolithic scale can be daunting, the details too much to take in. The library alone, also known as the Laurentina, seems an entire cosmos arranged into stacks and shelves, as if all human learning were bound within one dreamlike, frescoed vault.
Almudena Pérez de Tudela, curator of the Royal Monastery, tends to point out the paintings (including works by Titian, El Greco, and Velázquez), and the finer points of the palace’s design and decoration. The uniqueness of the structure, she says, lies in its “perfect synthesis of Italian Renaissance architecture with Nordic or Flemish solutions like slate spires.”
But the original purpose of this complex was sepulchral, she reminds us. At its core is a burial chamber for the Hapsburg (and later Bourbon) monarchs of Spain. Even today, says the curator, “the main function of the monastery is to watch over the royal family members laid to rest in the Pantheon of Kings.” There they lie, entombed in marble beneath the palace built by their ancestor. Philip II himself is down among them, of course, beside later regents and their consorts from Charles I to Alphonse XII. All now immortals in their own way, like the dragon that sleeps nearby, in the very stone from which this masterpiece was made.