By Max Milano (Travel Writer)

Aragon is a high, arid desert stretching from the Pyrenees in Northern Spain to the Ebro Valley and southward to Teruel and the Valencia border. It's hot in summer and cold in winter, when its red desert land is coated with snow. George Orwell served in Aragon’s badlands during the Spanish Civil War and wrote about how the machine gun nests on the hills looked almost beautiful in the winter snow.

It’s summer now, and we walk along a dusty dirt track surrounding the ruins of Belchite. I pause to examine an old Mudejar-style church, scarred by bullet holes and mortar blasts. Across the street lies a destroyed village—a vortex of torn bricks, adobe, and plaster piled behind barely standing facades. Empty balconies open to nothing but destruction. I snap a few shots with a 22-millimeter lens, wishing I had my zoom lens, but it’s back in the car.

Despite its ruin, the church retains a certain dignity and exoticism, especially in the intricate Mudejar decorations on its minaret-like tower. Arabesque designs in red plaster, stars, and geometric figures adorn the tower—once, these skills decorated mosques. In Aragon, history lives in buildings and landscapes, and nothing tells the history of this land better than this ruined church destroyed during the Spanish Civil War in 1937…Continue Reading on GuiriGuru.com