Aspi
New Member
- Time of past OR future Camino
- 2020
That self-confidence of Valladolid women, that exactness in diction, pristine as a morning light, always ready to tell you about Doña Urraca and Alfonso VII, and at the same time vigorously simple, that you ask them to make you an omelette scramble because you're going on the way to Tamariz and you have not been able to see an open bar, and they roll up their sleeves ... I don't know what we are going to do with their husbands, really, so dry and circumspect, always measuring the millimeter, but for the worse purpose!, as the dog of the gardener, who neither drinks nor lets drink. ¡ the future of Castilla is at stake ...
These days I go up through the lands of Segovia and Valladolid towards Sahagún. I wanted to see how work these secondary sections of the Camino de Santiago, with signs, shelters and landscapes, and test whether February is too early or not to launch into a wandering plan, due to the cold and humid conditions. I wanted to get out of the house now, actually: it's starting to happen to me like sailors: in the city I hit the walls, I bloat and overwhelm, my blood doesn't flow, the ghosts win the game. I need openess.
For some reason, blood has become a central theme for me these days, more literally or more metaphorically. This does not have much mystery in principle, because the difference between a sedentary life and nomadism is that in the second the blood runs better to all the members. But right away, a whole series of figurative senses have come to the fore in this game of systole - diastole. The most striking and forceful has been to appreciate a remarkable parallel between my body bloating, and the depopulation of this central area of Castile.
The other day I arrived in Añe, a town in Segovia, with all the intention of staying to sleep there - I had 28 km behind me, and the next town with a shelter would be 5 km more, 33 in total. I left the backpack in the square, and there was not even God in the streets. I thought I heard a conversation in the distance, and following my ear I went down a narrow street that led to an agricultural warehouse. There were two guys there, a little older than me, not very good looking, like bloated, feeding some chickens. I asked them about a bar, there wasn't, about a the hostel, there wasn't, a bus to St María la Real, there wasn't… maybe it was the smell of the chickens, or their face without too much watering, I don't know, something was violating me. I was actually tired and hungry. I asked them if they could prepare me a sandwich, that I would pay them, and they came to me that this is empty Spain etc ... and I already bounced back and blurted out: "Joer, this is Spain without spirit, please !!!"
I went back to the square, and an old woman had gone out for a walk. I also asked her for a sandwich, and the same, “oh! In these towns we have nothing left”. Then, another younger woman comes out of the same house, I suppose her daughter, and she goes to the other corner of the square to talk to another neighbor, who comes out of nowhere as if by magic. I perceive that I can hear everything they say, and they are saying: "Well the other day I gave a homeless man a sandwich and then he was rude, so I have already told my mother, don't open to anyone." The truth is that it was hard for me to realize that her conversation was an echo of the one I had had with the two men and with the old woman, so the whole neighborhood had heard us and was reacting "live and direct" no matter how much the town continued to seem to have no more life than the ghost Comala of Pedro Páramo. Well, the collective conscience is a value to consider! (although in this case, I could have left Añe scalded)
The dormant faces of the two men in the chicken warehouse stuck with me, and these days it came back to me like a fatalistic visual blow when I got out of bed, when I saw some ramshackle farm, when I entered a Chernobyl-style store, or when I heard reggaeton in a car passing by. And since I am somewhat paranoid, I told myself that surely all this was a projection of an internal state of generalized sanguine laziness on me.
But hey, one of my little wisdoms learned over the years is contra.arguing when I go blue: if these exterior impressions are projection of my mind, so will these wonderful first-morning skies, with that Naples yellow light, right? Of such virginal neatness that one cannot but intuit in them and all the sharp cornices of Castilian finesse. And this is where these women from Valladolid come in that I have been meeting, today in Villalón de Campos, that without me asking her more than where the road markings followed, she has launched to explain to me, with the freshness of the castilian actress concha Velasco in her better years, the exceptional “jurisdictional roll” that they have in the octagonal square of the town hall. And what is this "jurisdictional roll"? Well, a column of public derision to which certain people were tied in the Middle Ages / Renaissance for different crimes. Ahhh, how interesting ...
And of course, that spark of culture brings color back to the cheeks of these peoples. This past Sunday I arrived around 12:30, very tired, to Wamba. Wow! The name of a Gothic king. The sap of Germania in the middle of Castile, R. Menendez Pidal would be delighted. The hospitalero from the night before had recommended that I go in to see the local church, but I found it closed and from the outside it didn't seem anything special, and the town was dead. They must also have a famous ossuary, thousands of skulls from centuries ago. I don´t like those gore things, but since there would be mass at one o'clock, I decided that I would at least see the church from the inside.
At least five, running, the priest arrived, from two other Masses that he had already officiated that morning, young and dynamic. He opens the door of the temple, and Wow, what a beautiful place! From the X-XII century, with very high ceilings, and a set of columns of a Romanesque purity in the style of Fromista, but even more slender: sober, clean stone, only a couple of side altarpieces - Flemish, I would say, although I do not know -.
The parishioners entered, it was quickly filled, and they seemed like an endearing family, wrapped up and exalted by the beauty of the space. I decided to stay.
The mass was at a fast pace, it was cold and the priest impressed an invigorating rhythm, like a pilgrim on a euphoric march in the middle of the morning through inspiring fields. I know almost all the songs of mass only half, but I seemed to discover in my voice fleshy / luminous / velvety qualities - which they would say on a podcast of classical music - that I loved, so I participated with joy in the songs. Surely I seemed quite freakie, but I understand that the eccentricity in the pilgrim is a right and almost even a duty. Furthermore, since I have been practicing the "Veni creator", "Salve Regina", "Benedicite omnia opera ..." trough the caminos, I think I perceive a certain timbric tone in my vocal cords, or in the resonant cavities of the body. I felt that the voice made me empathize and harmonize with the community, with that mystifying sensitivity that arises in the pilgrim seasons, and thus, strangely, I thought I perceived in my body and spirit something of the Paschal lamb that is given in communion.
Everything seemed so appropriate, so resonant, so enlightening, how the architecture dressed the sublime life of that community in communion, that I said to myself: “I could come to live here… almost… I should come to live here”. You see, what half an hour ago seemed to me a discouraged town of four hovels and two flocks of sheep.
This contrast and sudden change in impression has occurred several times these days. The day before yesterday the destination of the day was Medina de Ríoseco, and the guide's hostel, a monastery of Poor Clares. I crossed the gate and the garden, I entered the reception, with its lathe, and there was a sign explaining that there had been a change of congregation: now the monastery was governed by a Brazilian order (a couple of glaring grammatical errors on the poster made me fear what worse). Nobody was there, so I went back to the garden and walked around the building. The church door was open.
In the background, on the altar, the Blessed Sacrament exposed, and in the first bench to the right, a seated monk, beckoning me with his arm to come closer. He had a stove in front of his feet, and he was surrounded by his devoted books, his Bible, and his rosary. 30-35 years old, chubby, with a kind face, shaved "Trentino", classic habits, when I got to him I realized that he was in full moment of rapture and adoration. It was intimidating to come to him with the innkeepers, but he began to speak to me, and with aa andalusian accent, with which the atmosphere became close and spontaneous. My loving vein lit up to see him there, like this, almost a boy, keeping the flame of the spirit with the mere presence of him.
He tells me that he is going to get the key and the seal of the credential, and I make a pretense of following him, but he snaps at me: "No, stay, the highest cannot remain alone." In the air there was something of the emotion that he had overturned. The monk leaves, and I only stay for about two minutes, I don't have time to ask myself what to do. When he returns and we leave in the direction of the hostel, I feel waves of love and admiration for this man, letting them flow with a certain exuberance.
"Attention to pilgrims is not our charism," he tells me, "we focus on contemplation and helping the poorest, but the Poor Clares of this convent had this service, and we adopted it." Little more he tells me. He leaves me to see me in the shelter, he leaves and I do not see him again, but he brings his presence back to my consciousness during the afternoon.
Today, in Melgar de Arriba, an artisan baker has given me a joy: he had a wonderful wood-oven bread and some muffins that were seductive for the eyes. My problem is always that I cannot accumulate purchases because they become an annoying weight for the backpack. But the friendly baker had a suitable solution for me: he has cut the bread, opened the bag of muffins and took out half, and shaped his product to my needs. It seems silly, but I haven't seen such commercial flexibility since I was in Italy. There the ingenuity, flexibility and goodwill with which artisan merchants adapted to the circumstances of the client was dazzling for me, and more than once I thought that part of the craftsmanship of the Italians nested in that ductile spark. Mergal's baker has also given me the same good vibes.
It is these human presences that keep the region alive, in my opinion. His blood. Here and there institutional interventions are seen, but many of them have not withstood the judgment of time, and I am afraid that the vertigos of "progress" have often been monsoon rains, very cumbersome, but instead of irrigating local life they erode it further. Yesterday much of the journey took me along the side of the Canal de Castilla, a typically Bourbon and French-style work, which has its enormous charm, but it is still one of the first historical examples that the bombastic European civilizing measures do not quite fit in well here.
… As I get closer to Sahagún, and to the lands of the old kingdom of León, I see more Mudejar brick churches, and more adobe houses, and the civilizational measure is less pompous. illustrated and more lean? As with more nerve, Urraca queens playing tricks on their husbands, Magpie romances who find silver brooches in a corner of the forest, cheeses and spirits to remove the hiccups, so I wonder if the extent to which this culture feels comfortable with itself it is the current, cholester, western one that sucks it up, or the guidelines of the European Union with its five-year plans. A hospitalero told me the second day that the money from European aid for depressed rural areas goes to the earth, not to human tissue. Thus, there are four rich farmers, who live in the capital and are seen around here with their fashionable cars, while the new generations continue to emigrate.
Yesterday, chatting with a barmaid of Bulgarian origin, she told me with regret that Melgar de Arriba - the last town in Valladolid before León - has lost the historic opportunity to have a nuclear cemetery here, which would give work to many people. Uah! I did not want to argue with her, but to myself I thought if we are thinking of a new beginning for a millennial civilization, or its end. The hint of hope that I feel every morning in that wonderful light of the plateau .... Who knows how to weave that golden thread? Once again those women from Valladolid come to mind - and not their husbands hahaha! - with their self-confidence, joy and finesse. I also think of the pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago, with their heads somewhat hallucinated by the endorphins of exercise, but also by the beauty of these silent, spacious lands and with that light ...
I will finish, ´cause with this writing that I carry, they will surely tie me in the Villalón square. This week I have come across a whole series of people who "chose" in their day to live in these lands, and they are the ones who give it the hunch of life. The reason I find most after their stories (a shopkeeper, a gardener, a hospitalera) is tranquility. Peace in the face of city hysteria. I recently read that the luxuries of the 21st century will be nature, silence and tranquility ... Tomorrow I would like to be in Moratinos, 5 km from Sahagún, with Rebekah Scott, an American from whom I have heard an interview in a podcast about the Camino from Santiago. Rebekah was a journalist, but she left everything to live in the peace of the plateau. Let's see what she tells me!
(written in February 2020)
.
These days I go up through the lands of Segovia and Valladolid towards Sahagún. I wanted to see how work these secondary sections of the Camino de Santiago, with signs, shelters and landscapes, and test whether February is too early or not to launch into a wandering plan, due to the cold and humid conditions. I wanted to get out of the house now, actually: it's starting to happen to me like sailors: in the city I hit the walls, I bloat and overwhelm, my blood doesn't flow, the ghosts win the game. I need openess.
For some reason, blood has become a central theme for me these days, more literally or more metaphorically. This does not have much mystery in principle, because the difference between a sedentary life and nomadism is that in the second the blood runs better to all the members. But right away, a whole series of figurative senses have come to the fore in this game of systole - diastole. The most striking and forceful has been to appreciate a remarkable parallel between my body bloating, and the depopulation of this central area of Castile.
The other day I arrived in Añe, a town in Segovia, with all the intention of staying to sleep there - I had 28 km behind me, and the next town with a shelter would be 5 km more, 33 in total. I left the backpack in the square, and there was not even God in the streets. I thought I heard a conversation in the distance, and following my ear I went down a narrow street that led to an agricultural warehouse. There were two guys there, a little older than me, not very good looking, like bloated, feeding some chickens. I asked them about a bar, there wasn't, about a the hostel, there wasn't, a bus to St María la Real, there wasn't… maybe it was the smell of the chickens, or their face without too much watering, I don't know, something was violating me. I was actually tired and hungry. I asked them if they could prepare me a sandwich, that I would pay them, and they came to me that this is empty Spain etc ... and I already bounced back and blurted out: "Joer, this is Spain without spirit, please !!!"
I went back to the square, and an old woman had gone out for a walk. I also asked her for a sandwich, and the same, “oh! In these towns we have nothing left”. Then, another younger woman comes out of the same house, I suppose her daughter, and she goes to the other corner of the square to talk to another neighbor, who comes out of nowhere as if by magic. I perceive that I can hear everything they say, and they are saying: "Well the other day I gave a homeless man a sandwich and then he was rude, so I have already told my mother, don't open to anyone." The truth is that it was hard for me to realize that her conversation was an echo of the one I had had with the two men and with the old woman, so the whole neighborhood had heard us and was reacting "live and direct" no matter how much the town continued to seem to have no more life than the ghost Comala of Pedro Páramo. Well, the collective conscience is a value to consider! (although in this case, I could have left Añe scalded)
The dormant faces of the two men in the chicken warehouse stuck with me, and these days it came back to me like a fatalistic visual blow when I got out of bed, when I saw some ramshackle farm, when I entered a Chernobyl-style store, or when I heard reggaeton in a car passing by. And since I am somewhat paranoid, I told myself that surely all this was a projection of an internal state of generalized sanguine laziness on me.
But hey, one of my little wisdoms learned over the years is contra.arguing when I go blue: if these exterior impressions are projection of my mind, so will these wonderful first-morning skies, with that Naples yellow light, right? Of such virginal neatness that one cannot but intuit in them and all the sharp cornices of Castilian finesse. And this is where these women from Valladolid come in that I have been meeting, today in Villalón de Campos, that without me asking her more than where the road markings followed, she has launched to explain to me, with the freshness of the castilian actress concha Velasco in her better years, the exceptional “jurisdictional roll” that they have in the octagonal square of the town hall. And what is this "jurisdictional roll"? Well, a column of public derision to which certain people were tied in the Middle Ages / Renaissance for different crimes. Ahhh, how interesting ...
And of course, that spark of culture brings color back to the cheeks of these peoples. This past Sunday I arrived around 12:30, very tired, to Wamba. Wow! The name of a Gothic king. The sap of Germania in the middle of Castile, R. Menendez Pidal would be delighted. The hospitalero from the night before had recommended that I go in to see the local church, but I found it closed and from the outside it didn't seem anything special, and the town was dead. They must also have a famous ossuary, thousands of skulls from centuries ago. I don´t like those gore things, but since there would be mass at one o'clock, I decided that I would at least see the church from the inside.
At least five, running, the priest arrived, from two other Masses that he had already officiated that morning, young and dynamic. He opens the door of the temple, and Wow, what a beautiful place! From the X-XII century, with very high ceilings, and a set of columns of a Romanesque purity in the style of Fromista, but even more slender: sober, clean stone, only a couple of side altarpieces - Flemish, I would say, although I do not know -.
The parishioners entered, it was quickly filled, and they seemed like an endearing family, wrapped up and exalted by the beauty of the space. I decided to stay.
The mass was at a fast pace, it was cold and the priest impressed an invigorating rhythm, like a pilgrim on a euphoric march in the middle of the morning through inspiring fields. I know almost all the songs of mass only half, but I seemed to discover in my voice fleshy / luminous / velvety qualities - which they would say on a podcast of classical music - that I loved, so I participated with joy in the songs. Surely I seemed quite freakie, but I understand that the eccentricity in the pilgrim is a right and almost even a duty. Furthermore, since I have been practicing the "Veni creator", "Salve Regina", "Benedicite omnia opera ..." trough the caminos, I think I perceive a certain timbric tone in my vocal cords, or in the resonant cavities of the body. I felt that the voice made me empathize and harmonize with the community, with that mystifying sensitivity that arises in the pilgrim seasons, and thus, strangely, I thought I perceived in my body and spirit something of the Paschal lamb that is given in communion.
Everything seemed so appropriate, so resonant, so enlightening, how the architecture dressed the sublime life of that community in communion, that I said to myself: “I could come to live here… almost… I should come to live here”. You see, what half an hour ago seemed to me a discouraged town of four hovels and two flocks of sheep.
This contrast and sudden change in impression has occurred several times these days. The day before yesterday the destination of the day was Medina de Ríoseco, and the guide's hostel, a monastery of Poor Clares. I crossed the gate and the garden, I entered the reception, with its lathe, and there was a sign explaining that there had been a change of congregation: now the monastery was governed by a Brazilian order (a couple of glaring grammatical errors on the poster made me fear what worse). Nobody was there, so I went back to the garden and walked around the building. The church door was open.
In the background, on the altar, the Blessed Sacrament exposed, and in the first bench to the right, a seated monk, beckoning me with his arm to come closer. He had a stove in front of his feet, and he was surrounded by his devoted books, his Bible, and his rosary. 30-35 years old, chubby, with a kind face, shaved "Trentino", classic habits, when I got to him I realized that he was in full moment of rapture and adoration. It was intimidating to come to him with the innkeepers, but he began to speak to me, and with aa andalusian accent, with which the atmosphere became close and spontaneous. My loving vein lit up to see him there, like this, almost a boy, keeping the flame of the spirit with the mere presence of him.
He tells me that he is going to get the key and the seal of the credential, and I make a pretense of following him, but he snaps at me: "No, stay, the highest cannot remain alone." In the air there was something of the emotion that he had overturned. The monk leaves, and I only stay for about two minutes, I don't have time to ask myself what to do. When he returns and we leave in the direction of the hostel, I feel waves of love and admiration for this man, letting them flow with a certain exuberance.
"Attention to pilgrims is not our charism," he tells me, "we focus on contemplation and helping the poorest, but the Poor Clares of this convent had this service, and we adopted it." Little more he tells me. He leaves me to see me in the shelter, he leaves and I do not see him again, but he brings his presence back to my consciousness during the afternoon.
Today, in Melgar de Arriba, an artisan baker has given me a joy: he had a wonderful wood-oven bread and some muffins that were seductive for the eyes. My problem is always that I cannot accumulate purchases because they become an annoying weight for the backpack. But the friendly baker had a suitable solution for me: he has cut the bread, opened the bag of muffins and took out half, and shaped his product to my needs. It seems silly, but I haven't seen such commercial flexibility since I was in Italy. There the ingenuity, flexibility and goodwill with which artisan merchants adapted to the circumstances of the client was dazzling for me, and more than once I thought that part of the craftsmanship of the Italians nested in that ductile spark. Mergal's baker has also given me the same good vibes.
It is these human presences that keep the region alive, in my opinion. His blood. Here and there institutional interventions are seen, but many of them have not withstood the judgment of time, and I am afraid that the vertigos of "progress" have often been monsoon rains, very cumbersome, but instead of irrigating local life they erode it further. Yesterday much of the journey took me along the side of the Canal de Castilla, a typically Bourbon and French-style work, which has its enormous charm, but it is still one of the first historical examples that the bombastic European civilizing measures do not quite fit in well here.
… As I get closer to Sahagún, and to the lands of the old kingdom of León, I see more Mudejar brick churches, and more adobe houses, and the civilizational measure is less pompous. illustrated and more lean? As with more nerve, Urraca queens playing tricks on their husbands, Magpie romances who find silver brooches in a corner of the forest, cheeses and spirits to remove the hiccups, so I wonder if the extent to which this culture feels comfortable with itself it is the current, cholester, western one that sucks it up, or the guidelines of the European Union with its five-year plans. A hospitalero told me the second day that the money from European aid for depressed rural areas goes to the earth, not to human tissue. Thus, there are four rich farmers, who live in the capital and are seen around here with their fashionable cars, while the new generations continue to emigrate.
Yesterday, chatting with a barmaid of Bulgarian origin, she told me with regret that Melgar de Arriba - the last town in Valladolid before León - has lost the historic opportunity to have a nuclear cemetery here, which would give work to many people. Uah! I did not want to argue with her, but to myself I thought if we are thinking of a new beginning for a millennial civilization, or its end. The hint of hope that I feel every morning in that wonderful light of the plateau .... Who knows how to weave that golden thread? Once again those women from Valladolid come to mind - and not their husbands hahaha! - with their self-confidence, joy and finesse. I also think of the pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago, with their heads somewhat hallucinated by the endorphins of exercise, but also by the beauty of these silent, spacious lands and with that light ...
I will finish, ´cause with this writing that I carry, they will surely tie me in the Villalón square. This week I have come across a whole series of people who "chose" in their day to live in these lands, and they are the ones who give it the hunch of life. The reason I find most after their stories (a shopkeeper, a gardener, a hospitalera) is tranquility. Peace in the face of city hysteria. I recently read that the luxuries of the 21st century will be nature, silence and tranquility ... Tomorrow I would like to be in Moratinos, 5 km from Sahagún, with Rebekah Scott, an American from whom I have heard an interview in a podcast about the Camino from Santiago. Rebekah was a journalist, but she left everything to live in the peace of the plateau. Let's see what she tells me!
(written in February 2020)
.
