La Pisá and La Peña del Toro

It is a rock engraving and another set of engravings and paintings in the same rock. The road works displaced the stone in the vicinity, they say… To explain this phenomenon the local culture of Castañar de Ibor resorted to a person and a bull that fell from the heights leaving the mark of their legs and the soles of their shoes on the stone.

Peña del Toro is located almost on the edge of the Ibor River, next to the road that descends along the valley floor to the Avellaneda.

It is an outcrop of limestone between a soil that is already leaving the slates to form the cracks. All the engravings face the river.

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ARCHEOLOGY

On the left side there is an opening that is filled with debris, seeing what is on the outside of the rock, it is exciting to venture the findings that can be expected inside. The well-known Mina de Ibor, with engravings dating from 20 to 30,000 years ago, just two kilometers away, is the reason for the existence of other similar areas in the vicinity.

The first engravings can be seen on a canvas next to the door: they are like large crosses that seem to cover other drawings. Below these, there are some marks in the form of old handwriting.

Following the route from left to right we will find a painting that looks like a cave painting, it represents a four-legged animal that could be a horse.

A few meters further on there is a canvas of cave paintings with varied motifs; although most of them are blurred, a large ancoriform with a singular figure can be seen, and next to it other stains among which simpler ancoriforms can be seen. In addition to the originality of the shapes, they are made in white. Below the paintings we begin to see a great profusion of engravings in which the stripes multiply to the point of making interpretation complex.

Perhaps there are too many stripes, an indecipherable puzzle, but among them are some figures that are recognizable. Patience and study go hand in hand to try to understand the message written on the stone.

The leftmost panel presents as fundamental motifs two figures of birds with a very naturalistic style. In the right panel there are also four representations of birds, although more careless than the previous ones in their execution.

We will still have to observe the “pisá del Toro” inside this rock attributed to the legend of the bull that rested his paw on the material that conforms it to give it charm and mysticism to the oral tradition of our town of Castañar.