Tor, a small and isolated town in the Catalan Pyrenees with a dark history

@ElentirENG ES 3·17·2024 · 23:27 0

In the northeast of Spain, in the Catalan Pyrenees and next to the border with Andorra, there is a small and beautiful town called Tor.

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The town is 1,649 meters high and surrounded by two ravines. On the peak to the north of the town, known as Roc de Sant Pere, are the ruins of a medieval castle, the Força de Tor, and near it are the remains of a Romanesque church. Between 1812 and 1927 Tor had its own town hall. Since then it has been part of the municipality of Alins, in the province of Lérida. In the middle of the 19th century it had 78 neighbors, but today there are very few neighbors (only 17, according to the 2019 census).

The town is not very well connected. On the Spanish side there is a paved road that reaches a small bridge, after which there is a private dirt road that runs for a distance of one and a half kilometers until reaching the town. To the east there is another dirt road in the direction of Andora, which forks before reaching the Principality. In winter, these roads are filled with snow, making car traffic difficult.

Due to its strategic position on the passes to Andorra through the Pyrenees, the ownership of the Tor mountain has been a source of conflict, initially due to the exploitation of wood and later due to real estate interests, throughout We must add the smuggling routes that passed through there to Andora. These conflicts are part of the dark history of Tor and its most tragic events.

In the summer of 1980 the disputes between two families escalated, knives were brandished in the center of town and shots were fired, as a result of which two people died. Years later, a court ruling granted ownership of the mountain to a single neighbor: in July of that year he was found murdered and in an advanced state of decomposition, a crime that to this day has not yet been solved .

This Sunday, the Monxileros Youtube channel (it has very good content, I encourage you to subscribe) has published a high-quality video showing Tor and telling its story (the video is in Spanish, you can activate the automatic subtitles in English in the bottom bar of the player):

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Main photo: Monxileros.