I cannot properly talk about the mountains of Costa Daurada. I wish I had the habit of getting lost in the Gorgs de la Febró or the Llaberia mountain chain, but the truth is that there are still a lot of paths from these mountains that I don’t know. However, I like to think about these places under a single name that groups them (the mountains of Costa Daurada). Since I belong to the Baix Camp, I deeply feel at home every time I see the outline of La Mola and I distinguish, at its right, the peak where the monastery of Escornalbou has rested for nearly a thousand years.
I have always seen these mountains. Since I was young they have been part of the continuous horizon that dominates the 20-minute way that separates the capital, Reus, from my country house in Riudecanyes –crossing Riudoms, Montbrió del Camp and Botarell–. I have seen these mountains as a teenager, across the window of the class where I studied 3rd course in Domènech i Montaner High School. And from the “Seminar”, behind the Cathedral of Tarragona, where I began my degree in Journalism. In times of change in my life, it has been really comforting to see these mountains.
So Joan Nogué (2005:177) is right when he states that “places –such a fundamental concept in the history of geography and language– act as a link, as a point of contact and interaction between global phenomena and individual experience.” And maybe this is why every time I sight La Mola and Escornalbou, I have the sensation that I am emotionally linked to a territory and that I can recognise myself in it. And this helps me verify to which extend landscape and its people have shaped my identity.
I love to go through the sinuous curves of the way that goes from Duesaigües to l’Argentera because I know that, in the end of the road, Diego’s boletus soup will be waiting for me. And, if the weather is nice, I love to climb to la Mussara and to see how the words of Shakespeare, Calderón and Sophocles revive the old village. I love the Mediterranean light Miró painted in La Masia, which can be breathed from Santa Marina or la Mare de Déu de la Roca. I love our fields of hazelnut, almond and olive trees, that exist from La Selva del Camp to Vandellòs. And I enjoy seeing them from every mountain surrounding the plain of the Camp de Tarragona.
And I think, following Raimon, that I am belong to a time and to a country. And, of course, to a territory and to its mountains.
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