Cova d'en Massot

Known since remote times. It is not, however, until 1973 that the first speleological data on the cavity are available, following a visit by members of the ACE Mataró who also carried out the survey. That same year it appears in the list of cavities on the map of the Garrotxa (Editorial Alpina, 1973) and in 1980, in the Catàleg Espeleològic de Catalunya the data are expanded and the survey carried out by the people of Mataró is published.

This cave has a macabre history: On 27 February 1845 (1844 according to other sources), a group of about twelve bandits armed with blunderbusses robbed, near Tordera, the stagecoach that ran the route from Perpinyà to Barcelona (from Barcelona to Girona according to other sources) and kidnapped three travellers, among whom was the young Joan Massot, from Darnius, with the intention of demanding a ransom. During the days that the flight lasted through the Montseny and the Guilleries, in the direction of the Pyrenees, pursued by soldiers, mossos and the sometent, two of the hostages died along the way. In some of the letters to the mother of the young Massot demanding the ransom, they even enclosed the boy's ears. After weeks of cruel torture, the young man was murdered in the cave that now bears his name, near the creu de Principi, in Albanyà. The bandits fled to France, where they were arrested in Sant Llorenç de Cerdans, tried in Montpeller and sentenced to forced labour, except four who were hanged, two in Perpinyà and two in Ceret.