Discovering Spain’s Sierra de la Demanda: the land that social media forgot | Spain holidays

As with paint colours or lipstick shades, naming a mountain range requires serious consideration. It should suggest character, create intrigue, and kindle desire. Who doesn’t want to explore the Crazy Mountains of Montana, or make a fiery pact with California’s Diablo Range? While studying a map of Spain, my interest was piqued by a patch of grey and green emptiness bearing the enticing words: Sierra de la Demanda.

I’ve travelled all over Spain for work and play in the last two decades, but somehow these “demanding” mountains had eluded me. Located in the remote northern interior, halfway between Madrid and Santander, their isolation (and a dearth of English-language Google results) only added to the mystique. The Sierra de la Demanda covers a vast area across Spain’s least populated regions of Burgos, Soria and La Rioja. An investigation of more detailed maps revealed an almost roadless expanse of limestone peaks, valleys, ravines, rivers, gorges and glacial lakes, with the highest peak, San Lorenzo, towering at 2,271 metres (7,451ft). The calling was real.

This is not the Spain of white villages and dusty olive groves. On the Demanda’s north face, where the climate is wetter and cooler, the improvised allotments, stone ruins and makeshift shacks are reminiscent of the forgotten corners of eastern Europe. Climbing higher, above the treeline, the terrain becomes harsh and rocky with sweeping views across plunging, pine-covered valleys. But unlike the dramatic outline of Spain’s more famous mountain ranges, the Demanda appear gradually, almost secretly, their true splendour only emerging once you’re deep in their midst. Every season brings its own charms. Winter is a snowy picture postcard, but in spring the meltwater sends waterfalls thundering down the mountainsides among wildflower meadows. Summer is hot and arid, but by autumn the temperatures hover in the mid-20Cs with (mostly) solid blue skies, and the ground is swathed in pink heather and alpine flowers.

The town of Ezcaray, on the north side, is the closest thing to a tourist hub – a scenic former textile centre on the River Oja that operates as a base for the small ski resort of Valdezcaray, built in the 1970s (the Palacio Azcárate has…