The Aneto cross has returned to the summit of the highest peak in the Pyrenees six months after someone cut it at the base with an angle grinder and threw it down the slope. A helicopter hired by the Benasque Town Council lifted the restored metal structure on Saturday, October 31, to the 3,404 meters of the summit, taking advantage of the good weather, according to elDiarioAragón and El Debate. The blacksmith Miguel Ángel Plaza, from Villanova, who repaired the cross, and the mountain guide Chemary Carrera took part in the operation, according to the portal Lugares de Aventura.
The cross, weighing about one hundred kilos, had been on the summit since 1951, when it was installed by the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya, according to the Diario del Alto Aragón cited by El Debate. Its disappearance was detected on April 17. Whoever knocked it down climbed to the summit with a cutting tool and cut it at the base, in an action that this outlet then described as a hate attack. The testimonies collected by Lugares de Aventura place the events between April 8 and 14, and the authorship has not been publicly clarified. On June 16, during a rescue, the Mountain Rescue and Intervention Group (GREIM) of Benasque and the Air Unit of the Civil Guard of Huesca located it half-buried in the snow on the north face, about two hundred meters below the summit. It remained in custody while the proceedings continued.
It was not the first time the cross had come down from the summit. In September 2023 it was dismantled due to storm damage and, after a restoration that reinforced the base and the anchors, it returned to its place on August 6, 2025, in an operation coordinated by the Civil Guard in which Plaza also took part. Eight months later, that reinforcement did not prevent it from being cut.
In the months without the original cross, the summit was not left empty. In May, the French mountaineer Maël Le Lagadec, 18 years old, carried on his shoulders a walnut wooden cross weighing about 35 kilos to temporarily occupy its place. A few days later it also appeared torn off and thrown down, and a group of Spanish climbers recovered it and put it back in place. The Movement Towards a Secular State (MHUEL) asked Seprona and the Government of Aragon to investigate the young man and, if applicable, sanction him, while the mayor of Benasque, Manuel Mora, supported the initiative, according to elDiarioAragón. In July, Le Lagadec climbed a second wooden cross, which remained on the summit until Saturday. The Town Council had announced that it would remove it when the historic one returned, and it did so during the operation.
The young man celebrated the return of a cross to the summit on his social networks: “They thought I was joking when I said I would climb as many times as necessary to reinstall it”, he wrote, according to El Debate. Mora, for his part, appealed for respect and the conservation of the elements that form part of the heritage and history of the territory, according to the Diario del Alto Aragón. The Town Council is also seeking stronger heritage protection for the symbols of the summit.
The Aneto cross is one of the best-known summit crosses in Spain and its fate has been followed throughout the year among mountaineers and the faithful. Its return closes a cycle that began with an angle grinder and continued with two wooden crosses, one of them also knocked down. Six months later, the original cross once again crowns the Pyrenees and the person who cut it remains nameless.
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