The villages of the Sierra de Salamanca are especially picturesque.
When I visited La Alberca for the first time, in 1977, I passed this town. My discovery was in 1985 and tourism had not yet passed through it. The tourist success has greatly benefited these towns and has favored the preservation of their rural architecture, but despite the fact that the restorations have strictly adhered to urban regulations, I miss their appearance and their strong character. The whole small farmhouse smelled like a stable and in the narrow and steep alleys, between semi-ruinous stone and adobe houses full of dust and cobwebs, there were stone facades with emblazoned portals, relics of its past as a stately town. The current visit will not disappoint anyone, very well preserved, everything very clean, almost immaculate and those of us who have known it originally, notice the restorations and their new stone color that give them away. I understand that they are only nostalgia for an old painter ...
I sold this watercolor with its old man who laboriously climbs the steep slope with his silence, I sold it in my second exhibition of watercolors at the Caja de Ahorros de Ronda in Torre del Mar in the summer of 1986. It is still perhaps my favorite watercolor.