The conflict between bears and wolves in the Cantabrian mountain range through a thriller by Marta del Riego

To observe a bear emerging from its months of bedding, it is necessary to wait for many hours, several kilometres away, patiently looking at the den through a telescope. The biologists lie on the ground or use small field chairs, eat chocolate, endure insect bites and say little: perhaps they comment on the passing of a buzzard or a deer. It is necessary to blend in with nature, to stop being an intruder in the ecosystem as much as possible.

Then the bear appears , having spent the winter with her vital functions idling, accompanied by two or three cubs. “It’s incredible that she is in good shape. She comes out, eats some grass and takes her cubs along the most difficult paths, so that they fall, bounce and learn,” says the writer and journalist Marta del Riego Anta (La Bañeza, León, 54 years old). She has spent some of those hours of silent expectation in the mountains of Asturias and León accompanying the biologists of the CSIC (of the Cantabrian Brown Bear group) and has also met the guards of the Bear Patrols . From there she has drawn some material to write her novel Cordillera (AdN), where, with some traces of the Leonese language, she deals with the conflicts between humans and wolves and bears, and also between humans themselves: ranchers and conservationists, those in the countryside and those in the city.

Del Riego grew up in the small town of La Bañeza in León, but her father had a sheepfold in a small village, where they used to spend time. During the pandemic lockdowns, the writer went there to spend six months with her son, avoiding the apocalyptic trance in her flat in Madrid’s Rastro. There she recovered a photo that her father had taken of her, somewhat blurry, in which she posed in the sheepfold with a “lamb” in her arms. She realised that she needed to write something that happened outdoors, that connected with her country childhood, that would also take her out of the city literarily. “I wanted something with snowstorms, blizzards, mountains and cliffs,” she says in a burst of German romanticism. And that is what she has done.

The interview takes place in Plantas Luego Existes , a plant and antiques shop in Madrid's Rastro, where the author is given a piece of green (not as wild as the mountain) in the middle of the urban grey. They kindly offer her a glass of wine, although at midday she recommends drinking water. The writer remembers the transhumant shepherds who, in her childhood, came down from the mountains to travel from the north to the south of León. "They were tall and blond, they came down with their mastiffs, they looked like mythological beings," she says, whether she is recreating a past reality or showing a memory distorted by fantasy.

Her novel has something mythical about it (the name of the setting, Barrios de Luna , is dreamlike) just as the mountain is mythical for the mountain people, almost a sleeping god who witnesses and contains their life. “The people of the mountains cannot live on the moor, they need the telluric force of the rock. In Babia , it seems that the mountains are born directly from the plain, mountains that emerge in a brutal way with very strange shapes. Living there gives a different way of seeing things,” says the writer.

In Cordillera , those who live there (and have a different way of seeing things) are the transhumant shepherdess Nidia, an image far removed from the stereotype of the rural woman that literature has represented, and who has a lot to do with a friend of the author, Violeta Alegre, also a merino shepherdess: “She is a heroine of the 21st century.” There is also the chief Evelio, who represents the most conservative forces in the countryside, sexist, authoritarian and determined to allow an energy company to plant its wind turbines in the mountains. From the city comes Darío, the biologist destined to investigate wild animals and who finds himself involved in the confrontation that the bear and the wolf provoke in that society. Some want to kill them, others protect them, others study them. It is difficult for the layman to read the forest, but inside there unfolds a whole cosmos in which animals, scientists, guards and poachers interact.

“In the mountain range there is a conflict between the cattle breeders and the conservationists . It is a complicated conflict, because all of us outside want the wolf and bear to proliferate, but the cattle breeders do not want to be told what is good for them,” says the author, who while writing her novel saw two decapitated wolf heads appear on the steps of the town hall in the Asturian town of Ponga. “In reality it is something that happens frequently, but I think a solution can be found,” says the author. “If the flock is left free it is likely that the wolf will attack it, but that is like leaving the door of your house open in Madrid. You can live together, you can put electric shepherds [cables that give the animals shocks so they do not leave the fold], have mastiffs… But there are those who have a brutal hatred of the wolf and want to finish it off,” says the author.

Other conflicts are shown in the novel: that of the abandoned mines (whose closure led to depopulation), that of the aforementioned wind turbines (“companies tend to come to the mountains when it is profitable and then abandon everything when it is no longer so,” says the author) or that of the reservoirs, for which Del Riego feels love-hate: it is beautiful how the waters reflect the mountains, but the waters also contain a tragedy. In the reservoir (they usually call it “swamp”, although it is not the same) of Barrios de Luna, there are 11 submerged towns. “The protagonist of the novel repeats the names out loud, as her grandmother did, so that they are not lost. They were very beautiful names, like Láncara de Luna,” says the writer.

Julio Llamazares , a novelist from León with strong ties to these lands, speaks in his books of abandoned villages and flooded towns, such as Vegamián, in the Porma reservoir. In recent times, culture has often reflected the clashes between the countryside and the city, as seen in films such as As bestas (Rodrigo Sorogoyen, 2022) or Alcarràs (Carla Simón, 2022). There are those who want to return to the countryside but without adopting traditional rural life, but rather maintaining urban jobs thanks to technology: a kind of urbanization of the countryside. And often customs do not understand each other. “Going back to the countryside is not so easy, you have to adapt to the rhythms, you have to learn from what you see there, sometimes there are clashes and confrontations. I have seen people who come from Madrid, who turn up the music at full volume and protest because the dogs are running loose and there are cow droppings in the street. “Who is more civilized, the villager or the city dweller?” says Del Riego.

In the end, the novel can also be understood as a reflection on the estrangement of the natural world. “A city boy can name 500 brands, but not so many animal names: we are very far from nature,” the author concludes.