Les Guilleries - Les Guilleries Km0 - Sant Hilari Sacalm
The undulating relief in Les Guilleries massif draws a natural region that has kept its culture and particularities over time. We are a territory with roots, connected to the environment, and we enjoy our own lifestyle. You have lots to see here.
It is a mountain massif located at the north-eastern side of the Catalan coastal mountain chain, crossed by the Ter river, distributed between the regions of Osona and La Selva. The maximum altitude is the one of Sant Miquel de Solterra (popularly called Sant Miquels de les formigues), which is 1,204 m high, and the lowest, in the lower valleys, about 300, but most of the heights range from 800 to 1,000 m .
The capital of this natural region is Sant Hilari Sacalm. From a geological point of view, it is an ancient massif of Paleozoic age, mainly formed by granitic and shale materials, which have conditioned the shape of the relief. We should highlight the presence of gneisses in Les Guilleries, the only place in the Catalan mountain chain where they appear. Below the extensive tablelands in the massif, a series of slight undulations and rounded peaks with a very characteristic relief are formed.
In terms of vegetation, it is a massif full of mountain evergreen oaks (quercus ilex) and some cork oaks (quercus suber) on the sunny valley slopes, and of deciduous species such as oaks, beeches (fagus sylvatica) and chestnut trees on the shadier slopes.
Nowadays, they also coexist with coniferous species used as a forest resource. With this rich vegetation, the presence of fauna is also very varied; you can easily find foxes, guilla in Catalan, from which the massif name is said to come. There are also other carnivorous animals, such as common genets, beech martens, European badgers and otters. The wild boar is also omnipresent in all the massif and beatings are organized to hunt it.
Les Guilleries, thanks to their mountainous and wild character, has been for many years an inhospitable and unknown area. A great number of stories and legends have come up from here; Also characters who, with this wild character from Les Guilleries, are popular throughout the country, such as Joan de Serrallonga (17th century), the most famous bandit in Catalonia, who became a myth because of the literature and popular culture; or the General Josep Moragues, a Catalan hero and martyr who, with his bravery, became an exemplary fighter in the defence of the Catalan cause during the War of the Spanish Succession.
