The summit of the Aneto has a cross once again. An 18-year-old French youth, Mäel Le Lagadec, climbed the highest peak of the Pyrenees last weekend carrying a walnut wood cross weighing about 35 kilos to place it where, until just a few weeks ago, the historic cross stood that had been deliberately torn down using an angle grinder.
The young man’s gesture has been received with emotion by numerous residents of the Benasque valley and mountaineers, after the disappearance of the original cross caused deep shock when it was confirmed that it had not fallen accidentally, but had been intentionally removed.
Le Lagadec documented the ascent in a video published on social media. Together with a friend, he began the climb from Llanos del Hospital at dawn and reached the summit of the Aneto, located at 3,404 meters above sea level, at 14:40.
A cross placed without institutional support
The young Frenchman, a native of the Tarn-et-Garonne department, personally crafted the cross using walnut wood and inscribed his initials on it. After crossing the Paso de Mahoma, he placed the structure on the summit using an ice axe to temporarily fix it in the snow.
Le Lagadec explained that he intends to return soon to secure it better against the wind and the extreme conditions of high mountain terrain.
The initiative has drawn particular attention because the young man himself acknowledged to the French newspaper La Dépêche that he only began practicing mountaineering a few months ago.
The Aneto cross was deliberately cut
The disappearance of the historic Aneto cross was not due to natural causes or an accident. Investigations point to one or more people who climbed to the summit equipped with an angle grinder to cut the aluminum structure and make it disappear afterward.
The cross, more than three meters tall and weighing nearly one hundred kilos, had been reinstalled on August 6, 2025, after a comprehensive restoration that strengthened both the base and the anchors. Precisely that reinforcement rules out the possibility that it could have come loose due to the wind or storms.
The Civil Guard has the investigation open and the main hypothesis is that the structure was intentionally cut and subsequently thrown down the mountain, possibly fragmented to make locating it difficult.
The heavy snowfalls recorded in the last weeks complicate the search efforts enormously. Some points of the massif accumulate significant snow depths that could completely hide the remains.
A Christian symbol with more than seventy years of history
The original cross was installed in August 1951 by the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the entity. Dozens of Spanish and French mountaineers participated then in the ascent of the structure to the summit of the Aneto.
Over the years, that cross became one of the most recognizable symbols of the Pyrenees. In 1956 an image of the Virgin of the Pilar was added and later a sculpture of Saint Martial, patron saint of Benasque.
During decades, the cross accompanied generations of hikers and mountaineers as a visible sign of faith, memory and tradition in one of Spain’s most emblematic summits.