After its launch a year ago with a sound walk through the Cárdenas Valley, Local Sounds has just added a second route through Viniegra de Abajo that allows visitors to tour the mountain town and learn about its heritage, culture and history … through the voices of its own neighbors, as well as historians and different academics with relationships or studies linked to this territory.
‘Viniegra de Abajo. Ranchers, Indians and Schools’, the title of this second Local Sounds route, runs circularly through the municipality for two kilometers. To enjoy it, the user/walker only needs a mobile phone with internet, access the website www.localsounds.es and listen in order to the nine audios that punctuate the route. After the introductory podcast, in Plaza Elías Romero, the journey begins in Puente Canto, over the waters of the Urbión, and then heads along Calle de los Huertos to the Cuatro Caños fountain. In this section and through the audio, the mayor of the town, Víctor Grandes, tells the founding legend of Viniegra and its original Visigoth settlement, and then gives the floor to Santiago Salas, an expert in History, who focuses on the origin and evolution of the community of the 7 Villas throughout the centuries.
From there, the successive podcasts revive transhumance in this territory closely linked to livestock farming; They bring us closer to the Indians, emigrants who went to America but never forgot their people; to the weight of education and schools, or to more recent realities such as the ArteVaca and Sierra Sonora cultural projects.
Among the neighbors and experts who have given their voice to trace this free, sound route through Viniegra de Abajo are its mayor, the historians Santiago Salas and Manolo Sainz, the ranchers Pedro Medell and Sergio Abad, the veterinarian Jesús García, the engineer of mountains Rafael Fernández Aldana, the promoters of Sierra Sonora, Álvaro Sainz, and ArteVaca, Pablo Bernáldez,… and residents of the town such as María Luisa, Yolanda, Josefa or Julián. Added to the words of all of them is the music of Messura, Vivace Folk, Jorge Garrido and Logroño, bagpipes and drums, and the ambient sound of the mountains.
Local Sounds is a pedagogical and cultural project led by Gonzalo Gómez Lobato with the sponsorship of the Government of La Rioja. His first experience debuted last spring with a route between Berceo and San Millán de la Cogolla, and during this time he has obtained about 100 monthly listens on average. In the words of Gómez Lobato, “these data have encouraged us to continue working on the project and propose new sound routes to provide La Rioja with new cultural tools that can serve as a tourist attraction and knowledge of this land.” A third sound walk through Canales de la Sierra will soon be launched with the title ‘Celtiberia and transhumance’.
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