Tranquility, this way – Pla de la Calma

March 15th, 2009 | Written by Lucy Brzoska.

Near the Bellver farmhouse there’s a sign depicting a walker with an arrow and the legend “La Calma”.  Tranquility, this way.

The Catalan word calma can also be translated into the Spanish altiplano or meseta, and the sign points to the undulating, largely treeless plateau on Montseny, Pla de la Calma.

I’d started walking in Figaró, at the bottom of the gloomy Congost valley, following a relentlessly steep track, coloured purple thanks to the lurid sandstone of the area.  It’s the quickest way up on foot but still a relief when you finally round the Tagamanent hill and join the GR 5 on the grassy terraces of Bellver.

A day of spring had arrived from out of the blue to finish off February.  Sitting on a slab of warm purple sandstone, I reviewed the landmarks: la Mola, the horizontal stripes of the Cingles de Berti, (the opposite, even steeper wall of the Congost Valley), the tips of the Montserrat peaks, and over to Barcelona, the Norman Foster tower and Tibidabo church. In between, a light veil of mist lay draped on the Valles.

Legs recovered, I followed the arrow.  Walking across Pla de la Calma puts a spring in your step.  Montseny’s steep, thickly wooded slopes are left behind, the sky opens up and you feel at eye-level with the Pyrenees. Down in the valley, noise gets trapped and amplified:  a barking dog is answered by a hundred echoes, a passing quad drills into your brain.  But up here, small sounds drift free and clear in the stillness: lark song, raven conversation, the hum of bees.  Fieldfares were everywhere, flying ahead, briefly perching on tree tops before fleeing further.  All day long I herded fieldfares across la Calma.

The main track takes you across to Collformic and the foot of Matagalls, still capped with snow.  I turned off, walking among broom, juniper and tree heath.  The grass was withered and colourless, recently thawed, and heaps of bracken lay dry and brown.  It was a landscape waiting to be transformed. In a fold of the plateau, I came across a swathe of beech trees by a stream, each one with space to spreadeagle its branches.  It’s still about a month before their leaves shoot.

Pla de la Calma used to be covered in beech woods before it was cleared for pasture, back in prehistory.  Flocks of sheep still graze here, but the open space is shrinking, with a consequent decline in biodiversity.  Shepherds used to burn off the encroaching woody species, but when Montseny was declared a natural park in 1978 the practice was outlawed.  There have been attempts to protect the area by cutting down invading Holm oak, clearing shrubs and sowing mixtures of herbaceous species.  But earlier this year the restoration project suffered a major setback.

Quick to curb traditional ways of exploiting Montseny, even banning grazing altogether in some areas, the park authorities have shown less initiative in controlling access to the track that crosses Pla de la Calma. In January,  Montseny shone like a beacon, a magnificent snow-covered vision clearly visible from the Barcelona metropolis.  Motorised hordes blocked the roads, delirious to play in the white stuff. Years of work was destoyed as cars, motorbikes and quads went off-piste.

In the aftermath, the track was closed and the day I was there no one passed. The stillness was restored.  As the day heated up, the Pyrenees became more and more abstract, a long line of white etchings, the blue above paler than the blue below.  It was warm enough to lie on the ground and dream – a sure sign of winter’s end.

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