90 years since the first ascent to the Torreón de los Galayos.

The first ascent of Torreón de los Galayos was made on 14 May 1933 on the west face by the "peñalaros" Teógenes Díaz and Ricardo Rubio.

The Torreón, the most emblematic spire of the Galayos, is an icon of Spanish mountaineering.

The Torreón de los Galayos, formerly also known as Torre or Pilón, is the most emblematic and unique spire of all those that make up the Galayar, in the Sierra de Gredos.

Much more than a majestic vertical granite column, the Torreón is one of the most iconic peaks of the Iberian Peninsula, comparable only to the Cavall Bernat in Montserrat or the Picu Urriellu itself. There is a reason why it was chosen to illustrate the coat of arms of the Spanish Mountaineering Federation.

As could not be otherwise, its individualised and vertical silhouette from any point of view, soon earned it the qualification of "inaccessible peak", as was reflected in the writings of illustrious names such as Antonio Victoy, Eduardo Schmidt and the Comín brothers, pioneers of mountaineering in the area at the beginning of the 20th century.

The great Teógenes-Rubio-Tresaco rope

The team formed by Teógenes Díaz, Ricardo Rubio and Ángel Tresaco, at the beginning of the 1930s, was one of the most prolific of the national mountaineering of the time. It was a turbulent period marked by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, which would ultimately mean a long break, almost the end, of the mountaineering career of our protagonists.

Tresaco and Rubio had met through the Peñalara club and started climbing together, when on one of their trips to the Pedriza del Manzanares they met Teógenes in the Giner de los Ríos refuge. It was from that moment in 1930 when the three of them would form a unique and unrepeatable team which, among other feats, would achieve several first ascents such as the first solo ascent of the Segundo Hermanito del Circo de Gredos (Teo, 1931), the first ascent of the Tercer Hermanito (Teo and Tresaco, 1931), the solo repetition without rope of the route of the Paso Horizontal to the Naranjo de Bulnes (Rubio, 1932), first to the Torreón de los Galayos (Teo and Rubio, 1933), first to the South of the Torreón (Teo, Tresaco, Herreros, Mato and Orgaz, 1933), south of the Pájaro in the Pedriza by a more direct route (Teo, Tresaco and Mato, 1934) or the sixth repetition to the couloir de Gaube opening the exit by the Jumeaux to the Pitón Carré, known as the Variante de los Españoles (Teo, Tresaco and Foliot, 1935).

The outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 marked the end of this legendary ropeway.

The Spanish Civil War marked the end of this legendary mountain range, which in those years would become part of the Alpine Battalion, in charge of defending the Republican positions in the Guadarrama.

Rubio and Tresaco left the mountaineering environment after the civil war and did not return to climbing as before. Tresaco went to live in Bilbao and then to Burgos. Ricardo, wounded at the end of the war near the Malagosto pass, returned in 1980, at the age of 77, to join the Peñalara GAM.

Teo, political commissar and one of those in charge of organising the battalion, was captured at the end of the war and condemned to death, a sentence he was able to commute to life imprisonment in the Valley of the Fallen thanks to the intercession of a priest friend, a former client of the marble workshop where he worked before the war began.

In the 1950s, having redeemed his sorrow, Teo had the courage to return to activity and open a new and even more difficult route to Tercer Hermanito, repeat the Gaube couloir, open the Carletto-Teógenes variant to Peña Santa in 1952, a mountain that had resisted him in 1935 and that Tresaco, due to health problems, gave up trying again; or open a new route in 1958 on the south face of Naranjo de Bulnes (the route on which Schulze had descended in 1906).

The Torreón climb is undoubtedly one of the great landmarks of Spanish mountaineering.

The ascent of Torreón de los Galayos by Teógenes Díaz and Ricardo Rubio is one of the most outstanding episodes in the history of Spanish mountaineering and marks the beginning of difficult climbing in Los Galayos.

This was a time when the technical means of climbing were limited to the use of abarcas, hemp ropes of barely 20 metres, and when pegs had not yet been installed to secure progression. In Spain they would begin to be used a few weeks later, during the first repetition of the Torreón by Tresaco (with the exception of those used by Schulze on the Naranjo in 1906).

The route followed by Teógenes and Rubio during the first ascent is not the most popular today. At that time they did not have climbing shoes or any of the other means we know today, but they knew how to put their hands, feet, arms, knees and whatever else was needed. This is probably why most of the climbers who climb the Torreón today choose the south face route, opened a few weeks later by Teo, Tresaco, Herreros, Mato and Orgaz and which had to wait until 1947 to be opened from the base (the South Direct, V) by Florencio Fuentes, Foliot and A. Rojas. To climb the West, it is normal nowadays to combine it in the first half with the Underground (V) or the Sol Galilea (IV).

Teógenes' account of the first ascent to the Torreón de los Galayos.

The account of that first climb narrated by Teógenes Díaz, who had a talent for writing, has been collected on several occasions in books and magazines, but we are also very lucky that the original published in 1933 in the Peñalara magazine is available online. At the end of the article we leave you the link and how to find it.

It starts like this :"Having heard from the lips of some "peñalaros" about the existence of a tower in Los Galayos, considered inaccessible at first sight due to its imposing appearance and total isolation, my two friends, Ángel Tresaco and Ricardo Rubio, and the writer of these pages, decided to give it a try. Professional obligations prevented the former from joining us"..

Apparently, the idea of climbing the Torreón came up while Teo and Ricardo were rappelling down the tenth floor of the telephone building to do some repairs. Ricardo was at a standstill at the time and Teo had asked him to help him.

After that, a couple of trips to get to know the place and some more climbing in the area were enough for Teógenes to take the Madrid-Arenas coach on 13 May 1933 to join his friend Ricardo, who as usual had made the journey by bicycle from Madrid, from where he had left the previous day.

From Arenas they head under a blazing sun to Guisando to continue on to Nogal del Barranco, where they stop for a dip in the river that flows down from the Apretura. It is May and the Galayar ridges are still dotted with large snowdrifts, writes Teo. In the afternoon they climb up to the first Galayar, where they stop for the night and have some potatoes. A bit of freshly cut grass will serve as a mattress.

At dawn the next day Teo writes: "DAWN - I opened my eyes at that moment when the diffused light, as if afraid of tearing the shadows, makes its appearance on the earth; it is dawn and I follow the process of the light with attention; the peaks that I contemplate are transformed, they return to life and are filled with light and joy at the mere caress of the sun, which brings them out of their stagnation. This spectacle of nature contains so much beauty and dynamism that the human retina cannot capture it in its entirety, and it is the thought that flies and soars to the infinite"..

After a sober breakfast of chocolate, bread and butter, Ricardo and Teo go up the Aguja Negra Channel to climb up to a fork that leads to the Apretura (the slope where the Victory hut is now located) and which separates what would later be called Punta Innominata and Punta Lirios.

From there they start a horizontal traverse and a climb that leaves them at another fork. They climb to a small summit to get a better view and see the impossibility of a first line that they have their eye on. A 20 metre abseil leaves them on a platform at the foot of which two crevasses open up. The first attempt on the left crack (via Malagón, grade Vº) was unsuccessful after two attempts by Teo and one by Ricardo. The next turn goes to Ricardo, who tries his luck on the right crack. He succeeds but the effort leaves him exhausted. The next pitch is the famous pitch where he has to overcome the embedded block. Teo manages to overcome it, making a great effort in which he even asks himself "Has my time come?. Once over the key pass and both of them reunited, they devour an orange without peeling it to regain their strength. Ten or twelve easy metres lead to the top of the crevasse and finally, they reach the summit. "And what a summit! Standing on it, one believes oneself to be immaterial and weightless; such is the sensation of its narrow summit, on which one must either stand or straddle".. This is by no means an exaggeration. This writer, who set foot on the summit in 2004, has never been on another one like it.

At the summit they placed a letterbox secured with stones that would later serve as a test (a local newspaper would write shortly afterwards that the cliff they had climbed was in fact the one known today as Gran Galayo), and they began a delicate descent down the south face in which they would have to make numerous abseils, traverses and abseilings, due to the rope used, which was only 20 metres long. To make matters worse, during the descent they are surprised by a downpour that forces them to stop for half an hour. The sandals slipped on the wet rock and they had to wait for it to dry out, writes Teo. In the end, thirteen hours of activity.

And if you still want more, here is a 7-minute extract from the 1983 report "Los Galayos, homage to the first galayistas", in which Teo talks about that climb.

And to finish with a recommendation. If you want to read more original stories like this one about the Torreón de los Galayos, we highly recommend you the book "From Teide to Naranjo: a literary anthology of our mountaineering".published in 2003. Its more than 700 pages contain 116 original texts carefully selected, either for their historical importance or for their literary quality, accompanied by a short introduction. A "must-have" book that should not be missing in your mountain library. You can get it directly from the Desnivel publishing house, or through the House of the Book or Amazonfor which we will receive a ridiculous commission, which is at the same time necessary to continue writing articles like this one.