Spain is filled with enigmatic and quirky places, from witches’ villages to towns full of cave homes, so it’s not actually surprising that Spain has its own mysterious lake, complete with the legend of its own monster. 

It’s called the Laguna Negra de Urbión and is located in the province of Soria in Castilla y León.

Sitting almost 2,000 metres above sea level, surrounded by dense pine forests and towering granite rocks, it seems almost impossible to reach, allowing this secluded and secretive place, to remain unchanged for centuries.  

As the name suggests, the water here is so dark and the lagoon so deep that it appears almost black, causing people to believe that it’s actually bottomless. This alone has caused many mysterious legends surrounding the lake. 

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The most famous of these stories is the La Tierra de Alvargonzález, by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado. In this long poem, he describes how two sons kill their father and throw his corpse into the lake. But remorse makes them return to the place, where they are swallowed by “the water of the bottomless lagoon”.  

But even before Machado wrote these words, the writer Pio Baroja also spoke of the place in his novel El Mayorazgo de Labraz, where he recounted that in the lagoon “there is a woman who lives at the bottom and kills whoever approaches. Everyone who looks into that water dies”.

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These stories have produced lots of mysteries and legends about the lagoon including the fact that it’s inhabited by a monster. Not unlike Scotland’s Loch Ness monster, this beast is rarely seen and lives way down in the depths of the lagoon. 

Many locals claim that they have seen this monster, but of course like, Loch Ness, nothing has been verified. 

The lake of course does have a bottom, experts believe it’s only around eight to ten metres deep, but because the water is so dark, this seems not to be the case. 

Whatever you believe about the mysterious lake, there are some things that are certain, it’s a spectacularly stunning spot, yet there’s something sinister about it too, which is why it’s inspired so many to tell stories about it.