The rain hit Aínsa like a curtain coming down. One minute the plaza was all sharp shadows and heat, the next the cobbles were black and the gutters were singing. I was under the arcades of the Plaza Mayor before the first flash of lightning, which was lucky, because the bakers on the corner were pulling their trays in and the only dry spot in the old town was exactly where I was standing.
This is the thing about a Pyrenean summer nobody tells you. The forecast said 18 to 33 degrees and heavy rain, and it meant all of it at once. Five millimetres in two hours, if you want the numbers. The plaza turned into a drum, and the sound bounced off the stone walls of the Castillo Fortaleza de Ainsa like someone was testing a very large kettle drum.
I'd been planning to walk the Green Corridor along the Ara river this morning. The path with the ornithology panels, the one that's popular with families and birdwatchers. Instead I bought a coffee at La KoffeeCleta, a tiny specialty place tucked near the arcades, and settled in to watch the weather do its work. €2.50 for a flat white, which is about what you'd pay in any Spanish town these days, and it came with a view of the rain making its own archaeology on the stones.
The Plaza Mayor here isn't just pretty. It's a medieval stage. The arcades run the full square, and under them the town's life has been playing out for centuries. I'm told the Aínsa Spoon Race legend is older than the castle itself. The story goes that when the Moors were besieging the town, the defenders sent a captured soldier back into the fort, and he found a way to signal the Christian forces with a spoon hung from the walls. Or maybe it was a spoon thrown into the river. The versions disagree, which is exactly how a good legend should work.
What's certain is that this town was the cradle of the Kingdom of Aragón. The battle of La Morisma, in 724, is commemorated here every two years with more than three hundred local actors in the plaza. I've missed it by a month, which is a shame, but I can picture the square full of them, the arcades packed with spectators, the rain holding off just long enough. The town has been a Historic-Artistic Site since 1965, and it shows. The old town was abandoned in the nineteenth century when the town moved downhill, which means the medieval core survived mostly unspoiled. That's why it feels like a film set that nobody ever packed away.
When the rain eased to a drizzle I made a run for it, down the hill past the modern town, the Aínsa Nuevo spread along the confluence of the Ara and Cinca rivers. I wanted to check the river level. You do, in these valleys, after a storm. The green corridor was empty, the benches slick and dripping, and the paths were laced with small waterfalls running off the hill. A family with two kids and a very wet terrier was turning back, laughing, the kids' shoes squelching. The river was up, but not angry. Just fuller, browner, and moving faster than it had yesterday.
There's a practical note worth making here, because it's the kind of thing that bites you in the Pyrenees. The trails in Ordesa y Monte Perdido, which is Spain's second-oldest national park, are mostly high mountain paths. After heavy rain they get slick, and the stream crossings can change overnight. My plan is to hit the park in a day or two, but I'm keeping an eye on the forecast and the trail reports at the Centro de Interpretación del Geoparque in town. The shuttles from Torla run through the season, and they're the sensible way in if you don't have a car. I'll be taking one, because the road into the valley is narrow and the car park at the trailhead fills by eight in the morning. That's not a rumour, that's just how it goes.
Lunch was a decision. The rain had stopped completely, and the sun was trying its hand again, steaming the wet stone. I went back up to the old town and took a table at Restaurante Sanchez, the same place I'd eaten yesterday, because when a thing is good you don't apologise for repeating it. A plate of Aragonese lamb, slow-cooked, with a glass of Somontano red. The wine comes from the region just south of here, and it's the taste I'm going to remember this whole trip. The lamb was €16, the wine €3.50 a glass. That's the kind of honest price that makes you love a place. I sat there for the full sobremesa, which is the Spanish art of not getting up from the table when the food is done, just letting the coffee and the conversation stretch out.
I had a chat with the owner about the Expoferia. The big livestock fair runs from early September, and the town fills up with farmers, shepherds, and their flocks. They bring the animals through the plaza, and the whole place takes on the rhythm of a working town rather than a tourist one. I'm here for ten days, so I'll catch the build-up. They told me the transhumance routes still run through these valleys, the old drove roads that connect the winter and summer pastures. Bearded vultures, the quebrantahuesos, nest in the limestone cliffs above the town, and the Eco Museo in the lower town has the rehabilitation story. I'm planning to visit tomorrow, before the next storm front comes through.
After lunch the sky did its fourth impersonation of the day, bright, then grey, then bright again. I walked back to the Plaza Mayor to watch a man set up his easel under the arcades, painting the same view I'd been staring at all morning, but with more patience. He was working in oils, and he had the castle and the church and the covered cross, the Cruz Cubierta, all in the frame. For €40 he'd sell you the painting, he said, if you had room in your luggage. I didn't, but I admired the nerve.
The rain had left the air smelling of wet stone and pine, and the light was doing that thing where the low sun catches every puddle like a coin. I sat on a bench at the edge of the plaza and just watched the town do its late afternoon thing. A woman sweeping her doorway with a broom that looked older than the building. A kid on a scooter who had discovered that wet cobbles are perfect for skidding. A pair of men in their eighties at the bar across the square, arguing about football with the passion of people who have been arguing about football since before the other men were born.
This is the other thing about Spain that doesn't fit on a postcard. The siesta isn't just a nap, it's a pause in the day that lets the town breathe. At five in the afternoon, the plaza was half empty and half full at the same time. The rain had reset the pressure, and everybody was moving slower, like the air itself had been rinsed.
I ducked into the Eco Museo, the Ecomuseo de la Fauna Pirenaica, which is run by the foundation that works on bearded vulture conservation. It's a small place, a room really, but it's dense. They've got the story of the species, how it was almost wiped out in the Pyrenees, and how they've been bringing it back with captive breeding and feeding stations. The entrance is €6, and I'd happily have paid double. I'm told the vultures nest in the cliffs of La Peña Montañesa, the long mountain you can see from the edge of town, and that if you're patient with binoculars you can watch them ride the thermals. I'm going to try, but the rain has other plans for tomorrow, apparently. So the park will wait a day, and I'll spend the morning in the lower town, doing the practical town stuff that a resident has to do.
That's the unglamorous part of living here rather than visiting. I still need to do my padrón, the municipal registration at the ayuntamiento. It's the key that unlocks everything else, healthcare, schooling, the bank account. The town hall here handles the Aínsa-Sobrarbe municipality, and they're used to new arrivals asking for the form. You take your passport, your rental contract if you have one, and a form they give you, and about twenty minutes later you're on the list. I'm told the paperwork is straightforward, but the bank will want the padrón certificate before they'll open a proper account. A non-resident account is possible with just a passport, but the fees are higher, and you don't get the same standing order setup. That's a real cost difference, not a small one. So I'll queue at the ayuntamiento tomorrow morning, then pop into Caja Rural de Aragón, the regional bank, which is the one people here actually use.
The evening came in soft and clear, the kind of light you get after a storm when the dust is settled and every leaf is sharp. I took a slow lap of the old town, past the museum of traditional trades, and the contemporary art documentary fund, which I hadn't expected to find in a town of fifteen hundred people. The arcades were lit up, and the restaurant tables were already filling. I stopped at La Carrasca Tapas for a plate of jamón and a glass of something cold, and I sat at the bar, watching the cook fire up the grill for the night's crowd.
I tallied my day in my head as I walked back to my flat. Coffee, lunch, museum, tapas. Around €32 all told, not counting the wine at dinner, which pushed it to maybe €40 for a full day of eating and exploring. For a town this size, that's fair. You could do it cheaper, if you ate supermarket sandwiches and skipped the museum, but you'd miss the point. The point is the pull up a chair and stay, the sobremesa, the slow afternoon, the rain that makes you sit still and look at a square for two hours. That's not a cost, that's an investment.
Tomorrow, the paperwork. The day after, Ordesa, if the rain gives us a gap. The day after that, the Expoferia build-up in the plaza, and maybe a walk out toward the vulture cliffs. The nice thing about ten days in one place is you don't have to see it all at once. You can let it happen the way the weather does, in its own time.
Whatever you're planning, check the trail conditions before you set out in these valleys, and book the shuttle from Torla ahead, because the seats go fast in August. Everything I've mentioned, the shuttle, the museum hours, the padrón paperwork, it's all in the episode notes, along with a few of the routes I'm scouting. Buenas noches, Aínsa. See you on the other side of the rain.