Santo Domingo de Silos: Sad Hill

Send us a text

“There are two kinds of people in this world… those who remember, and those who forget.”

At Sad Hill Cemetery in northern Spain—a once-forgotten film set brought back to life—memory takes centre stage. In this episode, I walk through Santo Domingo de Silos and into the story-soaked silence of Sad Hill, where fiction, history, and grief blur at the edges.

I meet Nick and Noah, a father and son from Belgium making a quiet pilgrimage in memory of Nick’s brother, Tim. I speak with Sergio Garcia and Raquel from the Asociación Cultural Sad Hill, who led the painstaking restoration. And I sit down with Clemente, an 82-year-old shopkeeper whose life has spanned dictatorships, revolutions—and one unforgettable Western.

This isn’t nostalgia. It’s not tourism. It’s something older. A reminder that some places—real or imagined—hold onto the stories we can’t let go.