After three days this February, and another three last fall, I climbed it. It became my first hard route this year. I had to put some extra energy into it. Mandragora is one of those routes where everything must be done in the correct way. You know, each part of your body must dance according to the rhythm that the route requires. No extra violent moves, just soft and smooth — until you reach the last gaston, then the violence is free and required. When you reach this, a not-so-bad rest leads you to a vertical, ugly wall and (on the day I redpointed) wet section. I was climbing desperately, because it is one of those parts that when you have been working the route you realize you cannot fail here. Okay, this was a theory of a positive brain. Now, the reality was that the bad feelings caught my thoughts. Fortunately, my mind, at that point, was not a brand new one, and I could resolve that section successfully and chain the belay with no small endeavor. 

In the mean time, I was climbing again in this marvelous and smooth (except for the names of the whole routes), ambient place, called Etxauri. I worked on an athletic route called Capitalismoaren Txerriak (8c+ [5.14c]) a couple of times — it translates to "Capitalism Pigs or something like that — and I managed to onsight Maskarada ("Masquerade"), 8a+ [5.13c], and Zurrunbillo ("Whirlwind"), 8a [5.13b].