Sautuola is a name that matters in this story. Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, a landowner from Cantabria, was the man who in 1879 recognised that the bison on the ceiling of Altamira had been painted by people of the Ice Age, and he was laughed at for it, and he died without seeing himself proved right. A shelter near Nerpio carries his name alongside that of a mill, which is a rather lovely thing to find in a village in Albacete, some seven hundred kilometres from Santillana. It sits less than two kilometres from the village.
The argument that Sautuola started never really ended. Levantine art, the art of the Mediterranean side of Spain, came to light in the early twentieth century, and it provoked its own long quarrels about age, style and meaning. Is it Palaeolithic, like Altamira, or much later, made by hunters and early farmers after the ice age? The consensus now leans to the later date, though debate continues, and each new dating technique gives new arguments. Standing at a Nerpio shelter, you are part of a conversation that has been going for a century and a half.
The ride is the same as for the other Nerpio shelters: climb from Yeste or Moratalla onto the plateau, with the road winding through pine and juniper, and enjoy the quiet. Take care in winter, when ice lingers in the shade. The mill in the name is a reminder that water here was valuable, and that small streams once drove grinding stones for the whole district.
Yeste, twenty-six kilometres away, has the nearest fuel, and Moratalla is further. Nerpio's bars serve plain mountain food, and the village is a pleasant place to rest. Carry water, avoid touching the rock, and take your time, because the paintings give up their details slowly.