Benaque

The little hamlet of Benaque

We are visiting a little known and very small village that is a hop, skip and a jump away from the larger village of Macharaviaya. There is even a two-kilometre walking track between the two villages, called the Ruta de Salvador Rueda after the hamlet´s most famous son, the poet of the same name who was born here on December 3rd 1857.

If you have never heard of Salvador Rueda, a visit to Benaque will quickly put that right. On entering the village, the road is called Calle de Salvador Rueda; the school is called Colegio de Salvador Rueda, the bar is called Salvador Rueda and the house he was born in bears a plaque showing he was born there and outside stands a bronze bust depicting his face. This simple house of his birth is a fitting place for this self-taught son of a labourer who himself called it a ‘poor house.’
The enormous brick-built church of Virgen del Rosario dominates the village and is so huge that the only place to photograph it is two kilometres away. 

Salvador Rueda has certainly left his presence in this sleepy hamlet as his poems have left their mark on the history of Spanish arts; he being their first modernist poet. The home town he loved and visited so often during his lifetime deeply influenced his poetry:
 
La campiña cuando sales
se inunda de luz alegre,
y las hojas de las ramas
baten las palmas al verte.
De dos montañas distintas
corren al mar dos arroyos,
y en el camino se juntan
para no caminar solos.

To find Benaque, turn off the autovia following signs for Macharaviaya, and after 11 kilometres,  just before the last turn on the road, you will see the village in the distance.

Benaque is at an altitude of 240 metres, a little higher up with the church standing proudly in its centre, and then Macharaviaya is two kilometres below it.

By Sally Harrison