Monterrubio is a Serrano municipality of the province of Burgos, almost at the border with La Rioja, which is reached by a mountain port (El Collado), in the territory of holm oaks, oak, and there are also truly formidable.
I met Monterrubio in the 60s of the twentieth century. Going from Aranda de Duero to Salas de los Infantes, and then a series of villages (the Barbadillos from above and from below, etc.), you enter a monetary area, precisely where Monterrubio is located. An area that some colloquially called “The Roconios Valley”, for living there the family of that name, a perpetual marriage, with eleven children.
Precisely in Monterrubio we met the Rocandio, and at a given time, that personal connection made us visit the town several times, always with great joy of snacks with excellent homemade sausages, and a serrano ham that competed gloriously with the Iberian himself.
And in those visits we were seeing the transformation of the people. Above all, its final step to empty Spain, increasingly depopulated. So that the Rocandio family only remained in the town already retired marriage.
One of the occasions of our visits to Monterrubio, the most celebrated, was that of the wedding of a Rocandio, Carmina, who married a young and elegant tapestry in Madrid, a boy as gallant as she is in woman. A couple who welded forever in a marriage in which family affection was always evident.
It can be said that the Monterrubio area has been reverded, and much of its old extension of pastures and cereal cultivation have become Pinus Silvestris plantations, which have grown in an extraordinary way. Financially supported by the reforestation purposes of the European Union of the 80s and 90s, especially.