The most common name for a cave in the Spanish countryside is not the name of a saint or a landowner but the Cueva de los Moros, the Moors' Cave, and the Vero valley is full of them. When people did not know who had painted an overhang or dug a hollow in the rock, they said it was the work of the Moors, who left the peninsula in the fifteenth century but whose memory remained as a catch-all for the mysterious past. Buried treasures, enchanted princesses and secret passages feature in the tales, and several caves on these routes carry the name. Huerto Raso I, five kilometres from Alquézar, belongs to the real painted tradition, though, and not the legendary one.
The paintings are of the Levantine type recognised by UNESCO in 1998, made at least six thousand years ago and perhaps more, by hunters and early farmers who lived long before the Moors or the Romans. It tells you something about the human mind that, when confronted with a faded red archer, we need to invent a story about it. Modern archaeologists study pigments, superimpositions and styles to build a chronology, but the human impulse behind the images remains out of reach.
The ride in is an easy pleasure from Barbastro, climbing up the A-1232 through country of vines, olives and oak, and the Sierra de Guara grows in the windshield. The bends are not severe, but there are a lot of them, and they come in groups of three or four. Traffic is light except on summer weekends, when cyclists and canyoners are out in force. In winter the road can be icy in shaded corners, and fog sometimes settles in the lower valley.
For lunch, there are small restaurants in Alquézar with terraces looking over the valley, and the local specialities are grilled lamb, mushrooms and cured meats. A glass of Somontano wine is a good accompaniment. If you go to the shelter on foot, bring water and wear walking shoes.