COVALANA CAVE
Certainly the most moving collection of rock paintings in the Iberian Peninsula. If the gallery is smaller than in other caves and fewer paintings, they were designed and realized not as isolated drawings but as a real work of art with subjects communicating between themselves and with the visitor as the latter advances in the cave. Light games and wall shapes are studied to give the best possible movements and prospects. It is really the great art that you recommend to discover on guided tour to do nothing to lose the very many details that make Covalanas such a particular cave. The narrow gallery imposes small groups, 7 or 8 people maximum, which facilitates contact with the works as with the guide. Rarely will you have the opportunity to be so close to original paintings in a good state of conservation!
The cave is 2,5 km from the city centre. A very pleasant hiking trail makes it possible to walk on foot, as long as you face the difference of just over 200 m. It is a good way to discover the beautiful panoramas surrounding the cave. Many populations were believed to inhabit caves in prehistoric times. A total of 14 caves decorated with paintings or engravings were found in the vicinity.
Covalanas is a space entirely dedicated to painting, a kind of cinema or prehistoric museum. Research has indeed shown that places of habitation were lower on the mountain, and only painting tools were found in the cave itself. The artist or artists came here only to exercise their art, with a goal that we still don't know. In any case, they painted in a place where the only way to see paintings was to bring light. At 65 metres from the entrance to the cave, the gallery is actually diving in the dark, and lighting to lamps should help to give movement effects to the animals represented.
The paintings would be 7 000 years older than the Altamira bison and the Mammoths of Lascaux. The animals represented here are deer and biches, animals placed very high in the Mammal Pantheon represented on Hispanic walls. The technique used is that of pointillism: you will notice that the strokes are not full but formed of point alignments obtained by placing the inch, coated with manganese oxide, on the wall.
There are about twenty figures, including a buffalo and a horse, all others are biches or deer. Although it is difficult to interpret the will of the artist, you will notice that the overall scheme responds to a plan and that the choice of locations is nothing insignificant. The animals seem to be watching us, moving away or repprocher from us depending on where we are in the gallery, without any failure in the route. At some distances, the biches of the entrance of the gallery might seem true, as the watchtower while the others are already fleeing upon arrival. We will certainly never know the motivations of the artist of Covalanas, and if the visit of the cave does not provide answers, she at least has the merit of urging us to question the meaning of these paintings and the message they give us.