La Pintada

About La Pintada:

The district lies directly north of Penonomé, the capital of Coclé, and its seat is about 15 km up a paved road from the city. From La Pintada town the roads fan out. One climbs through Piedras Gordas to El Harino and links up with El Copé; the Ministry of Public Works started resurfacing its 16.7 km in April 2025, a B/.16 million job. Another runs north through Llano Grande into Llano Norte and on to Coclesito, in Colón, and the copper mine company realigned part of it in 2021 to take out its worst curve. A third heads east to Toabré and Caimito, in the north of Penonomé district, and loops back to the city; in July 2026 the ministry opened bids to rehabilitate those 67 km. Two of the seven corregimientos are young: Las Lomas, beyond El Copé, was split from El Harino in 2002, and Llano Norte was split from Llano Grande in 2011 and, at 308 km², is now the largest in the district.

A 2011 law named La Pintada the Cuna del Sombrero Pintao, and in 2017 UNESCO inscribed the craft of weaving the hat. Hill families have earned cash from it since the early twentieth century, cutting and boiling junco, bellota and chonta and braiding the fibres into the black-and-white rings that mark a fine hat. The rest of the living comes off the land: maize, rice and yuca on small plots, cebú calves raised for sale, citrus marketed by a growers’ association in Piedras Gordas, coffee for the household near the cordillera, and tobacco that is hand-rolled into cigars in the town. The seat has the town hall, the courts and the treasury, and for a hospital or a big supermarket people drive to Penonomé. North of the district, across the Colón border, the Cobre Panamá copper mine paved roads, paid for bridges and hired from these communities until production stopped in November 2023. At the end of September 2026 a ministerial commission recommended restarting it, and the president said he would take his time over the decision.

Some 60% of the district is mountain, and its two halves live under different weather. Around the seat the dry season bites: pasture browns, streams stop running, and summer water is what a farm or a house lot is really priced on. North and west, on the slopes of the cordillera, it rains most of the year, rivers rise fast and dirt roads turn to mud, so a farm an hour of track from the asphalt is a different purchase from one on the paved road. Roughly seven-tenths of the Parque Nacional General de División Omar Torrijos Herrera lies inside La Pintada, nearly half of it in El Harino alone. The park covers 25,275 hectares of forest, was created in 1986 and is named for the general who died in a plane crash on Cerro Marta, within its limits; the road up to it climbs from El Copé through Barrigón. Closer to town, the peak of Cerro Orarí stands at 560 metres over the valley.

The district grew from 23,202 people in 2000 to 25,639 in 2010 and 29,698 in 2023, and every corregimiento gained residents rather than the seat alone. Most sales happen between local families: an inheritance divided among siblings, a rancher taking on the next pasture, sons and daughters back from Panama City building on their parents’ land. People who work in Penonomé buy close to the paved road, where buses make the run between the two towns. From outside come buyers for river fincas on the northern slope, forest land near the park and plots for a weekend house or a few guest cabins. All of them pay a fraction of what land fetches on the Coclé coast.

Houses in La Pintada:

Most of the houses on the market are in the seat and the valley communities around it: single-storey concrete homes on their own lots, with some social-interest housing among them. In August 2025 the municipal council authorised the mayor to sign an agreement with MIVIOT, the housing ministry, to build a housing project on a municipal finca in La Pintada corregimiento. Bigger, newer houses with gardens line the road down to Penonomé, but some homes advertised on the “vía La Pintada” sit in Penonomé district, so read the corregimiento on the deed. Further out, a house usually comes as part of a farm, from a farmhouse on several hectares in Piedras Gordas to a main house and guest house on a 46-hectare estate near the seat. Anyone weighing houses for sale in La Pintada should look first at the water connection and the road in October.

Land and Lots in La Pintada:

Small plots come onto the market when a family finca is divided. Near the seat and along the paved roads they have power at the roadside and are bought to put up a house with a yard. On the resurfaced road to Piedras Gordas and El Harino, and on the Coclesito road through Llano Grande, a lot with frontage can carry a house with a shop in front. Larger parcels of 25 hectares and more come up on the Penonomé side of the district and in the north, and up in the hills the land is sloped, covered in regrowth and cut by streams. Cutting older rastrojo takes a permit from the Ministry of Environment, and a parcel you cannot clear is worth far less to a farmer, so settle that question before you agree on land for sale in La Pintada.

Fincas in La Pintada:

There are three kinds of finca here. In the valley they are cattle places, flat pasture raising cebú calves for the auction in Penonomé, and their value follows the water that lasts through March and April. On the northern slope, in Llano Grande and Llano Norte, holdings pass 100 hectares, mix pasture with forest and often have a river running through them. In the hills of Piedras Gordas, El Harino and Las Lomas, closer to the park, farms are smaller and steeper, with citrus, coffee, springs and forest, and they draw buyers who want a retreat or a few cabins for visitors. With any of these farms in Coclé’s hill country, the access road in September and October tells you more about the real distance than the map does.

FAQ:

• The ad just says “La Pintada”. How do I know where the land actually is?

  La Pintada is the name of the district and of its seat corregimiento, and farms on the Penonomé side, in Tulú or Cañaveral, are often sold as “on the La Pintada road”. The boundaries have also moved: land in Las Lomas belonged to El Harino until 2002, and land in Llano Norte to Llano Grande until 2011, so older deeds and survey plans use the old names. The finca number at the Registro Público and the corregimiento printed on the survey plan settle the question; the place name in an advert does not.

• Could a finca in the hills fall inside the national park?

  It could. About seven-tenths of the Omar Torrijos park is in this district, mostly in El Harino but also in Piedras Gordas, Las Lomas and Llano Grande, and seven communities lie inside its limits. Clearing and building are restricted in a national park, so have the survey coordinates checked against the park boundary with the Ministry of Environment before you pay. Find out too whether the land is titled or held only as derecho posesorio, which is common in these hills.

• Which roads are paved?

  The road from Penonomé to the seat is paved, and so is the road north through Llano Grande toward Coclesito. The 16.7 km to Piedras Gordas and El Harino were resurfaced from 2025, and the eastern loop through Toabré and Caimito went out to tender in 2026. Side roads into the hamlets are mostly gravel or dirt, and they are the ones to drive in October.

• Does the copper mine matter if I buy here?

  Mostly for the north of the district. Roads, bridges and jobs in Llano Grande and Llano Norte came with the mine, and production has been stopped since November 2023 while the government decides its future. If a seller’s price only works with the mine running again, it is a bet, not a valuation.

• Is water a problem?

  It depends on which half of the district you are in. In the valley around the seat, streams can dry up between January and April, so a well or a spring that lasts all summer adds real value. In the wet north and west the problem is too much water: rivers that flood crossings and slopes that need drainage. Many hill villages run their own community aqueducts with a local board, and a lot without a confirmed connection may leave you drilling a well.