The history of Tor Mountain is shrouded in mystery; it is, to say the least, eventful and curious. In 1986, the 13 families of the village of Tor decided, in anticipation of the state's refusal to expropriate the mountain, to establish a community of co-owners, drafting bylaws to govern it. Thus, they agreed that the mountain would be the property of those residents who kept the fire lit year-round (i.e., lived there permanently).
Before the civil war, the owners of the mountain—although it is isolated for most of the winter and living conditions are very harsh there—were considered the richest in the area. They had livestock, good pastures, and timber, and that was what being rich was like back then. Furthermore, despite the isolation and harshness of life, or perhaps precisely because of it, the thirteen families lived together fairly.
During the Civil War and later, in the postwar period, with famine and the dictatorship, a series of circumstances, such as the fact that up there, even today, they lack running water, electricity, or telephone lines and are cut off for most of the winter, led to the departure of most of the village's residents, at least during the colder months. But the trigger that precipitated this abandonment was the burning of four of the houses following the pursuit and execution by the Civil Guard of some Maquis who had taken refuge in the mountains.
Thus, since the statutes expressly stated the condition of "keeping the fire lit" all year round to maintain ownership, rigging, envy, hatred, and quarrels broke out in a frantic battle between the three most important houses of Tor, plagued by lawsuits and trials, and punctuated by several murders, to gain control and ownership of the mountain.
Josep Montané, known as "Sansa," and Francesc Sarroca, known as "Cerdá," the current patriarchs of two of these strongholds, united only by their cause, as they were also separated by old disputes, were fighting with the intention of selling or renting it out to build a leisure complex and ski slopes. The other chieftain, Jordi Riba, of the "Palanca" family, was fighting only to assert his right as the sole owner and freely sell the timber from the site, as well as "manage" the passage of smugglers (which is not lacking in this story) from Andorra.
Amidst delirious situations more typical of some tragic writer's imagination than real life, "Sansa" and "Cerdá" lease the mountain in 1976, unbeknownst to the rest of the co-owners, to Rubén Castañer, an Aragonese-Andorran real estate agent, who walks around "his domain" with two bodyguards. Two years later, "Palanca," associated by circumstance with the other co-owners, rents it to two lumberjacks who will act as his bodyguards. Thus, the tension is palpable, and tragedy is palpable.
The first to be murdered, in 1980, were two of the Palanca's bodyguards, killed by Rubén Castañer's two "protectors." According to Palanca's statements, they were trying to kill him, but Castañer managed to escape. In 1981, lawyers for Sansa and Cerdá filed a lawsuit against the other neighbors for taking ownership of the mountain.
In 1995, the judge in Tremp ruled in favor of "Sansa," declaring him the sole owner of Tor, based on the fact that he was the only one who could prove that he lived on the mountain year-round. This excluded the other litigant with whom he was on the side against "Palanca," "Cerdá." But his reign in Tor would last only five months before he was assassinated.
Finally, after numerous legal proceedings and appeals, in 2002, the Lleida Court ruled that the mountain belonged to all the heirs of the thirteen founders. Palanca and Sansa's heirs filed an appeal, which was rejected for the final time in 2005 by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia, which upheld the 2002 ruling.
Journalist Carles Porta became deeply involved in this adventure, from which, as he himself declares, he will never fully escape, when the murder of Josep Montané Baró, known as "Sansa," was discovered in Tor, and TV3, the television channel for which he worked, sent him to cover the story for a program for that network called "30 minuts" (30 minuts)—a reference to its duration. The team's investigative work and excellent report were so magnificent that they were awarded the Pirineus Journalism Prize for the report.
Some time after its broadcast, in 2003, Porta received a grant from the Vallverdú Literary Awards in Lleida to write a book on the subject, which gave rise to "Tor, The Cursed Mountain." A gripping and mysterious book that presents human misery head-on with a touch of humor and simplicity.
Source: Revista Ibérica