This is Montserrat, in Catalunya, north of Spain.
Between 1985 and 2004, I flew over this mountain every time I went to visit my father. My mother died in 1984 and after her death my father went to live in Catalunya, northern Spain, an area now striving for independence from Spain. The rest of the world knows it as Catalonia, but the locals call it Catalunya, and as a near-local, so do I. My father returned to the UK this year aged 95, no longer able to be independent, but for 23 years, that mountain was the gateway to my father’s home, and seeing it from the plane was the signal that I was nearly there.
It’s an unusual formation, and without making a much larger block it’s hard to do the mountain justice, but if you’re interested, take a look at what Wikipedia has to say about it.
Montserrat means ‘saw-tooth mountain’ in Català (Catalan), and the name suits it. I’m a little sad that I’ll never see it again in real life; Pa no longer lives there and I’m no longer able to make the long flight back to Europe because of my back. This is the perfect opportunity to say goodbye to it.
Adéu, muntanya 🙂
