🌙 Did you know that on a mountain near Soria, it's said that the dead rise from their graves every All Souls' Night to continue a battle that never ended? Or that in Jaén, a giant lizard devoured the locals until a condemned man blew it up with a sack of gunpowder? In this documentary, we explore five Spanish legends that have been told for centuries, stories that originated hundreds of years ago and are still repeated today as if they happened yesterday.

🏛️ We begin in Soria, with El Monte de las Ánimas (The Mountain of Souls), the tradition that Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer published in 1861 in El Contemporáneo. We will meet Alonso and the cold Beatriz, the blue ribbon lost in the mountains, and the night neither of them forgot. We will pause at the ruins of the Monastery of San Juan de Duero, on the banks of the Duero River, to separate fact from legend. Then we travel to Jaén, to the Magdalena neighborhood, to discover the Lizard of La Malena: the fountain, the beast, the prisoner with his horse, his warm loaves of bread and his gunpowder, the other two versions of the story, and the saying still heard throughout Andalusia.

🔎 We continue with the Olive Tree of Blood, the legend of the tree that sprouted from the blood of a beheaded king, and with the miraculous olive tree that Muslim scholars like al-Udri and al-Zuhri described in their books a thousand years ago, in the Granada region of La Sagra. Later, we delve into the Treasure of the Moor Musa: the conquest of 711, Tariq, the Table of Solomon, Musa's fall from grace in Damascus, and the question that has remained unanswered for thirteen hundred years: where did he hide the loot? Toledo, Mérida, Seville, or some lost cave?

🏰 We finish in the Catalan Pyrenees, in Ripollès, with Count Arnau, the fiery rider who rides a black horse without rest. We visit Mataplana Castle, the Monastery of Sant Joan de les Abadesses with its royal scandal of 1017, the Gorg dels Banyuts (Gorg of the Bathers), and the most unsettling scene of the old song: the dialogue with his widow through the closed door. Throughout the journey, we distinguish between documented accounts, popular tradition, and the imagination of those who told the stories.

😴 Get comfortable, dim the lights, and join me as we explore five corners of Spain where the dead fight, monsters explode, trees bleed, treasures are lost, and a count gallops forever amidst the storms.

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💬 Were you familiar with these legends? Which city or neighborhood in Spain would you like to discover in the next documentary?