Abstract

Few studies in the geographical literature have focused on historic rural routes, which are traditionally considered to be part of the farming landscape. Today, this subject can be tackled from the perspective of changing rural spaces and the disappearance of traditional landscapes and societies. This work studies the evolution of routes that connected municipalities in a mountainous region in the north of the Madrid province, focusing on the creation and disappearance of one particular historic rural route. Various information sources are used: documentary and archival sources, fieldwork for geographical dating of the route and informal interviews and geoethnographical analysis of the elderly population of permanent residents in the area.