Piedras Bermejas

Located in the heart of a forest, amid the Dehesa del Santo Cristo meadowland, the ”lungs” of the mountain town of Baños de la Encina, the popular beauty spot known as Piedras Bermejas (Bermejas Stones) creates a spectacular landscape encompassing hundreds of enormous granite balls spread out among pine groves.

This haphazard landscape of extreme beauty is home to treasures of great historical, archaeological and ethnographic worth. A path running through woodland of pine and eucalyptus trees leads visitors to Mediterranean shrubland that includes different varieties of rockrose, rosemary, French lavender, marjoram and broom, before heading across a red granite landscape traversed by an ancient path made using the technique called “glarea strata” (gravestone road). Known as San Lorenzo Way, it is most likely of Roman origin.

A few hundred metres from the path lie other local gems: the characteristic Huertos en Barranco (Ravine Gardens) created in the 19th century as a result of the Desamortización Civil de Madoz (Confiscations of Madoz), the so-called Piedra Escurridera (Colander Stone) and Las Migaldías Argaric Fort or Cerro Los Molinos (1,500 B.C.).