Herba Savina: the abandoned village of Pallars and the story of an unsolved crime

Herba Savina: the abandoned village of Pallars and the story of an unsolved crime

In short:

There are abandoned villages in the Pyrenees that seem to have been frozen in time. Roofless houses, old paths almost erased by vegetation and fields that the forest has slowly reclaimed. Herba Savina is one of them, but its story is far more complex than its ruins might suggest.

This small settlement in Pallars Jussà went from being home to several families devoted to farming and livestock to becoming completely uninhabited. Between those two moments came decades of isolation, profound changes in the rural Pyrenean world and one particularly dark episode: the murder of a tenant-farming family in 1943, a crime that never resulted in a conviction.

Today, Herba Savina attracts visitors for very different reasons. Its location, the landscapes of the Serra de Carreu and Boumort, the memory of those who once lived here and the historic paths leading to its ruins make it one of the most distinctive places in the Lleida Pre-Pyrenees.

Where is Herba Savina?

Herba Savina —also written as Herba-Savina or Herba-savina— currently belongs to the municipality of Conca de Dalt, in the Pallars Jussà region.

The former settlement lies in the Carreu area, close to Pessonada and within a territory characterised by extensive forests, rocky cliffs, ravines and small rural settlements scattered far apart.

Its location explains much of its history. Today, reaching the village is part of the appeal of the excursion, but for centuries that same distance from the main population centres had a profound impact on the lives of its inhabitants.

There were no roads like those of today, travel was done on foot or with animals, and much of the local economy depended directly on what could be produced from the fields, forests and livestock.

What life was like in Herba Savina

At the beginning of the 20th century, around a dozen families still lived in Herba Savina. As in many small settlements across the Pyrenees and Pre-Pyrenees, the house was not simply a home: it was the centre of a small economic unit based on land, livestock, woodland and family labour.

Life was closely tied to the surrounding territory. Paths connected Herba Savina with Pessonada and with the farmhouses scattered across Carreu, while relationships between neighbouring households were essential in an area where the distance from larger towns meant people often had to rely on one another.

But isolation had another side. Ownership of a plot of land, access to woodland, livestock routes or property boundaries could become matters of enormous importance for families whose survival depended directly on the land.

That rural world began to change rapidly during the 20th century. Cities offered wages and services that small mountain villages could not provide, new roads transformed communications and traditional farming was no longer enough to support many families.

Herba Savina gradually lost its inhabitants. However, before the depopulation process reached its final stage, the area became associated with one of the best-known criminal cases in the recent history of Pallars.

The 1943 Carreu crime

In 1943, in the farmhouses of Carreu, a tenant-farming family consisting of a married couple and their two daughters was murdered. The killings shocked the inhabitants of Herba Savina, Pessonada and the surrounding farmhouses and villages.

However, the news barely reached the rest of the country. Spain was in the early years of Franco’s dictatorship, and information about a multiple murder in a remote rural area of the Pyrenees received very little coverage.

The isolation of the territory also made the investigation more difficult. Carreu was a world of scattered houses, mountain paths and small communities where almost everyone knew one another and where family, economic and neighbourly relationships could stretch across generations.

The murder became deeply embedded in the collective memory of the area. For decades, stories continued to circulate about what had happened and about the possible motives behind the crime.

A crime that was never solved

The investigation never resulted in a conviction, and the murder remained officially unsolved.

The case continued to raise questions for years. The victims’ bodies were even exhumed for further examination, but this also failed to bring the case to a judicial conclusion.

What happened in Carreu gradually became a story passed down through generations. In a sparsely populated territory, the memory remained alive long after the legal investigation had stopped moving forward.

Over time, the gradual disappearance of the farmhouses and the abandonment of Herba Savina added another dimension to the story: many of the places connected with those events eventually became deserted too.

Dos taüts negres i dos de blancs: from local memory to literature

Seventy years after the crime, writer Pep Coll, who was born in nearby Pessonada, brought the story back to public attention in his novel Dos taüts negres i dos de blancs.

Coll spent around three years researching the events and reconstructing the biographies of the people connected with them. The novel was published in 2013 and transformed an episode previously known mainly in Pallars into a story that reached readers throughout Catalonia.

The book goes far beyond reconstructing a murder. Through the crime, it portrays a rural world that has now almost disappeared: isolated farmhouses, dependence on the land, family hierarchies, property disputes and relationships between people forced to live together in a territory with very few ways out.

Dos taüts negres i dos de blancs later received the Premi Crexells and other literary awards.

The connection between literature and the landscape remains alive. In 2026, Conca de Dalt launched an immersive literary route inspired by the novel, following a route from Pessonada to Herba Savina and allowing visitors to discover the places associated with the story.

From isolation to the abandonment of Herba Savina

The crime forms part of the memory of the place, but it was not the reason Herba Savina was abandoned. Its depopulation should be understood as part of a much wider process that affected many villages and farmhouses across the Pyrenees during the 20th century.

At the beginning of the century, around twelve families lived in the village. By 1964, only four remained.

That same year, a decisive event took place. The state forestry administration acquired the village and its land as part of land-purchase and reforestation policies that transformed large rural mountain areas during those decades.

Not all residents wanted to leave immediately. One family refused to abandon its home and land and remained there for another five years.

Living alongside the new forestry use of the territory became increasingly difficult. Nearby plots were replanted with pine trees, and maintaining traditional livestock farming and fields became more complicated.

Finally, in 1969, that family left Herba Savina and moved to La Pobla de Segur. By then, the depopulation process was practically irreversible.

The same story was repeated, under different circumstances, in many Pyrenean settlements: traditional activities disappeared, younger generations looked for work in larger towns, and maintaining basic services for tiny communities became increasingly difficult.

What remains of Herba Savina today?

Walking through Herba Savina today means exploring the traces of a village that nature is slowly reclaiming.

There are still ruins of former homes, stone walls, areas once used for livestock and remains of the settlement’s original layout. Some buildings have completely lost their roofs, while others retain only sections of their walls.

This is not a museum or a reconstructed village. That is precisely part of its appeal: it offers a direct view of what happens when a rural settlement remains uninhabited for decades.

Vegetation has taken over former fields, footpaths have replaced streets, and the landscape that once surrounded human activity is gradually becoming dominant again.

When visiting the ruins, it is important to remember that these are old and deteriorated structures. Entering unstable buildings or climbing on walls is not recommended, both for safety reasons and to avoid accelerating their deterioration.

Herba Savina and the Serra de Boumort

History is only one part of Herba Savina’s appeal. The other major attraction is its natural setting.

The village lies next to one of the most interesting areas of the Pre-Pyrenees: the territory of Carreu and the Serra de Boumort, characterised by extensive forests, large rocky cliffs and a very low human population density.

Boumort is particularly well known for its wildlife. The open landscapes and forests of the area provide habitat for numerous mountain species and make walking here a very different experience from following trails close to the main tourist centres of the Pyrenees.

In autumn, the area is also known for the red deer rut, one of Boumort’s most characteristic natural spectacles.

The combination of rural heritage, history and nature means that an excursion to Herba Savina is much more than a visit to a set of ruins. The former village helps us understand how human presence shaped this landscape for centuries and how it has transformed again since depopulation.

How to get to Herba Savina

One of the most interesting ways to discover the village is to reach it on foot from Pessonada, following the old path once used by its inhabitants.

The Camí vell d’Herba-savina starts from the old part of Pessonada and continues along a historic bridle path beneath the area’s impressive rock wall. The route leads to the ruins of Herba Savina and offers a much clearer sense of the isolation that shaped life in this small settlement.

The complete route takes a little over three hours for the round trip, although the final duration will depend on pace, stops and the chosen itinerary.

There is also track access to the area around Font de les Trilles, from where Herba Savina is approximately a fifteen-minute walk away. However, reaching the village along the old path from Pessonada turns the visit into a genuine hiking route and allows you to enjoy much more of the surrounding landscape.

Hiking route to Herba Savina

At MundoCanyon, we propose discovering Herba Savina on foot, following the old paths that once connected the small villages of Conca de Dalt.

The excursion combines hiking, nature, heritage and history: we will explore the landscape of Carreu, learn how the inhabitants of these small settlements lived and finally reach the ruins of the abandoned village.

If you would like to complete the route with a guide and discover the stories hidden behind the landscape, take a look at our Herba Savina hiking route.

Herba Savina: an empty village that still has stories to tell

Herba Savina is not simply one of the many abandoned villages scattered across the Pyrenees. Its ruins reflect many of the transformations experienced by the rural world during the 20th century.

The families who lived from the land, the isolation, the crime that marked the memory of an entire region, the gradual departure of the residents and the subsequent return of the forest all form different layers of the same story.

Today, silence dominates the place. But walking along the old path from Pessonada and among the walls of Herba Savina is enough to discover that, although the village has lost its inhabitants, it still has many stories to tell.