A changing landscape supported by forest management.

River Valley and La Granja. 1964-2024. Segovia Provincial Historical Archive/Mario Lozano Enguita

 

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We show a brief summary of the evolution of the territory and the mountains of the wonderful surroundings of this Segovian municipality, where the palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso or Felipe V, the palace of Riofrío or Isabel de Farnesio and the ruins of the palace of Valsaín or Felipe II are located.

 

Palace of Valsaín circa 1633, work of Felix Castillo. Commissioned by Felipe II. There were already previous constructions from the House of Trastámara that they used as a hunting and recreation pavilion. You can see the state of the Segovian mountains of Valsaín at that time.

  

In the 1964 panoramic aerial image that we reproduce, you can see the state of the mountains in the Cambrones River valley, located northeast and in front of the Segovian mountains of Valsaín. Part of the town of La Granja can be seen. Some architectural elements are distinguished, among which some stand out, such as the Royal Glass Factory commissioned by Carlos III, the Polishing House of the Royal Factory, part of the gardens of the palace of La Granja or the current glass factory recently built by then.

 

The Pyrenean oak grove that is observed is the "La Mata de la Saúca" mountain. The slopes of the mountain range, which in their day were Scots pine forests, appear completely cleared of trees, with poor soils as a result of secular use as pastures for sheep, fundamentally. In the left quadrant you can see the forest house of "La Pedrona" and the flying forest nursery, where the plants for reforestation were produced. Currently this nursery has been converted into an arboretum of various species, many of them existing in the gardens of the palace of La Granja. Also noteworthy are "Peñas Buitreras" and the famous "Chorro Grande" and "Chorro Chico". 

Image by Mario Lozano

 

In the previous photo, the grasslands (cervunales) surrounded by broomlands can be seen, which are relegated to the higher parts, high plateaus of the territory. These cervunales have not varied in extension and composition since the reference photo. In the image we distinguish alternations of glandular orthogneisses with leucogneisses, which are what form the rocks with scree such as "Peñas Buitreras" and which is observed in the upper right part. On the previously deforested slopes, the Scots pine repopulations carried out manually with soil preparation are observed, either by yoke of oxen or by manual digging, and whose execution lasted many years. Practically the entire surface has been traversed in first or second thinnings to grade the thickness depending on the season, the species, the age and the structure, diversifying and reducing the combustibility of these forest systems.

Decreasing in altitude we find the Pyrenean oak groves of "La Mata de la Saúca" that have persisted due to their secular use and value for obtaining firewood, and that have evolved favorably during the last decades. In the upper left part, pastures for cattle are maintained, dominated by poor soils, with hardly any organic horizon, and some scrubland areas that have as a dominant species the Adenocarpus hispanicus.

On the ridge of "La Atalaya" you can see the natural colonization of Scots pine and the scrubland due to the decrease in livestock and variation in the type of livestock, from sheep to cattle.

 

 

Image by Mario Lozano

Technology and knowledge have evolved enormously in recent decades in all aspects. In this photo we can observe one of the fundamental tasks in forest repopulations, which is soil preparation. In this case, mechanized digging with a spider excavator has been carried out in the restoration of the La Granja forest fire.

Forest repopulations formerly employed a huge number of workers existing in rural areas and whose work served as a complement in times when agricultural and livestock activity was scarce in the extinct traditional Spanish agrarian system, which completely disappeared in the early eighties. In the following photo we want to pay tribute to all those anonymous people who participated. One of the last cattle drivers who participated in these forest repopulations that currently form part of the public utility mountains nº 257 "Umbría de los Saltillos" and nº 258 "Los Saltillos" and the Sierra Norte de Guadarrama Natural Park and Sierra de Guadarrama National Park in Segovia."

Image by J. Plaza

 

All the material presented here has been thanks to: Fco. Javier Plaza Martín and Mario Lozano Enguita (@birds_grylls). Segovia Territorial Environment Service. JCYL. 

1964 image from the State Forest Heritage deposited in the Segovia Provincial Historical Archive and in the Segovia territorial archive of the Junta de Castilla y León.

 

(versión en español)