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In Las Fotos de los Lectores de La Vanguardia we discover the ghost village of La Mussara, a depopulated village within the municipality of Vilaplana, in the region of Baix Camp, which has been uninhabited since 1959.
According to the writer and cultural activist Albert Manent, the depopulation process of La Mussara was due to the scarcity of water, the low quality of the land and the lack of incentives to adapt to modernity.
But, the fact is that it is a place that was already alive in the Middle Ages. It appears mentioned for the first time in a population letter of 1173 in which King Alfonso I confirms properties to the Archbishop of Tarragona. La Mussara was part of Prades County since its founding.
For its part, the church of La Mussara is named for the first time in a bull of Celestino III of 1194. It maintained the category of parish until in 1534 it became dependent on that of Vilaplana.
The inhabitants of this town were known as frogs because, when it rained, a small natural reservoir was formed that served to give the animals drink.
During the visit to this ghost village, eight buildings in ruins can be seen. The best preserved is the old church of Sant Salvador, with a bell tower from 1859, although traces of a previous Gothic building on which this temple was built can still be seen.
Inside there was an image from the 14th century of the Virgen del Patrocinio that is kept in the Reus Museum.
A phrase in Catalan originates from this ghost town, “baixar de la Mussara” (to get down from La Mussara), whose meaning is to ignore what everyone knows. Its equivalent in Spanish would be the phrase “to be in the fig tree”.
