The Sierra de Santa Cruz has served as a stage for millennia to show all kinds of rites and spiritual manifestations, visible today in rock altars, menhirs, triliths, initiatory doors, throne-seats, anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, rock engravings, cupolas and a long etcetera.
Its triangular shape rising from the plain towards the Gods has been seen as a real totem by all civilizations that have passed through it.
The energy that emerges among its stones complements this spiritual reality.
Topographically, the Sierra is characterized as a mountain-island or inselberg, which rises above the surrounding peneplain, offering a watchtower of unquestionable strategic importance as a control of passage and defensive control of the territory. On the other hand, on a spiritual level, it has been seen as a kind of totem.It was occupied by a multitude of civilizations not only for defensive purposes but also as a place of worship, a needle from which to raise prayers to the Gods (hence the proliferation of rock altars, shrines and other sacred manifestations, which have given it the appellative of “sacred place”). Sacred Mountain), so it is not surprising that small groups of the Stone Age and Chalcolithic first, and the Bronze and Iron Ages later, took this elevation as a place of expression of a spirituality that was necessary to them when developing their life plans, in line with a currently unknown knowledge, but that would be part of their daily lives and would be inherent and necessary to their existence.
Undoubtedly, this topographically privileged position is clearly linked to the roads and routes that these ancient cultures used in their travels through the different territories. These natural passage and transit routes were reused by pre-Roman cultures for their movements, as well as by the Romans through their roads. The Sacred Mountain would be located in the center of a communications triangle, so it is not surprising that later cattle trails (Cañadas Reales) also used these passes, as did the current road network. A landmark, a mountain, a totem, a needle, an antenna, a projection towards the sky; that and much more is what the ancient settlers saw in the Sierra de Santa Cruz to develop such a succession of settlements, both warrior and habitat, as well as spiritual and cult settlements.
