Portillo de Lunada (South side)

Portillo de Lunada (South side)

From Espinosa de los Monteros, in Burgos, Spain, the road to the Portillo de Lunada climbs to the border with Cantabria. The town takes its name from the Monteros, a guard created around 1006 to watch over the sovereign at night. The Vuelta a España climbed this side in 2017, as the first climb of the stage to Los Machucos.

This ride starts at Las Machorras, a Pasiego village where families moved between stone cabins with the seasons. The road climbs the Lunada valley, whose river flows south and eventually into the Ebro. At the top, the ruins of the 1791 log slide mark the watershed, where the water turns north towards the Miera.