Mequinenza had to move. In the 1960s and 1970s, two dams built on the Ebro created a huge reservoir known as the Mar de Aragón, and the old town at the meeting of the Ebro and the Segre was abandoned and largely demolished, its people resettled in a new town above. The story is told in the town's museums and in the novels of Jesús Moncada, who grew up in the old Mequinenza. In a ravine nearby, the Abric del Barranc de Sant Jaume holds prehistoric paintings, part of the World Heritage Site of Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin.
The landscape around Mequinenza is dry and dramatic, with eroded hills, gypsum cliffs and the great expanse of the reservoir. The water attracts anglers from all over Europe, drawn by the giant catfish, the wels, which were introduced into the Ebro and can grow to enormous sizes. The banks are lined with fishing camps and boats.
The riding here is a mix of open, straight roads across the plateau and winding routes along the rivers. The road from Mequinenza to Fraga follows the Segre valley, and the roads south towards the Matarraña and the Ports de Beseit offer more mountains. Summers are very hot, often over forty degrees, and the wind can be strong. Spring and autumn are the best times to ride.
Fraga, thirteen kilometres away on the Cinca, is the place for fuel, a workshop or a proper meal. Its old town climbs a hillside above the river, and it is famous for its figs, dried and sold across Spain, with a fig fair every autumn. Out on the plains, irrigation from the rivers has turned the dry land into orchards of peaches, apricots and cherries, and in early summer roadside stalls sell fruit by the box.
Mequinenza's museums tell the story of the drowned town and of the lignite mines that once employed much of the population, with a recreated mine gallery you can walk through. After that, a dip where the rivers meet, or a cold drink on a terrace above the water watching the anglers wait for their monster, is about the right speed for a summer afternoon in a place that regularly sees forty degrees.