* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia
I captured this series of snowy landscape photographs for La Vanguardia’s Readers’ Photos in the area of ??La Mussara, in Baix Camp, an abandoned town shrouded in legends and whose inhabitants were known as “frogs”.
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.
The inhabitants of this town were known as “frogs” because, when it rained, a small natural reservoir was formed that was used to water the animals.
A phrase in Catalan, “baixar de la Mussara” (get down from La Mussara), has its origins in this deserted area, the meaning of which is to ignore what everyone knows. Its equivalent in Spanish would be the phrase “estar en la higuera.”
There are all kinds of stories surrounding this abandoned town. A legend says, for example, that La Mussara is a dimensional door and the fog acts as a hinge to another reality.
