In astronomical terms, we would say that it is a kind of planetary conjunction: the 800th birthday of the
Gothic cathedral of Burgos
and the
Jacobean Holy Year
, with the Camino de Santiago crossing three towns that host
the exhibition
Las Adades del Hombre
, with the solemnity of a statement that has made a fortune (but it is not original, the idea comes from Hesiod, Ovid and even Saint Augustine). The fact is that
Las Adades…
this year reaches its
25th edition
, its silver anniversary. And its motto is
Lux
(light),
the light that the Gothic style brought
, precisely introduced in Spain through the Camino de Santiago.
In addition to being a key concept for pastoral catechesis, which never escapes the people of the event: we walk, precisely, towards the light.
Burgos, Carrión de los Condes (Palencia) and Sahagún (León)
, three in a row on the Camino, are the towns that house the five venues or venues in the sample.
And Burgos is, of course, the largest planet.
The frozen planet, how cold.
One arrives warned.
If we believe the journalist
Álex Grijelmo
, who is from Burgos, when someone asks about the summer in Burgos, they may respond: "Ah, yes, last year it fell on Wednesday."
Well, not anymore.
Watching the ticket queues, enduring without shelter a tropical sun, one realizes that things have changed.
Exterior of the cathedral of Burgos.
LUIS DAVILLA getty images
Burgos, pure emotion
The cathedral of Burgos
, in whose cloisters, upper and lower, is the main exhibition of
The Ages of Man
, is one of those human artifacts that overwhelms.
Wonder, this Unesco world heritage building has been seducing since 1984. One looks for the right word to dress emotion, and it is not easy.
Julio Llamazares
, in his book on the cathedrals of Spain
(Las Rosas de piedra,
2008), does not know where to start: the central gable with its rose window, the dome “which is an authentic filigree, like the entire cathedral;
More than stonework, it looks like the work of goldsmithing ”.
The cloisters of the temple, apart from the content of
Las Edades…
, are in themselves so as not to lose detail, especially the top. The theme developed there is
time and the splendor of the cathedrals
. A time in which the medieval rule of the monasteries, which had treasured and irradiated culture, was dying and the construction of the great cathedrals began in the cities. They were not only a place of worship or pilgrimage, but they contained germs of social assistance (hospices, hospitals) or teaching ("general studies" that would give rise to universities, in some cases). With the Camino Jacobeo —although the same would have happened without it, possibly— the Gothic style is introduced in Spain, which provides, among other novelties,
lighten the stone walls with stained glass windows that give way to clarity
.
Hence also this year's motto,
Lux
.
Detail in the wooden door of access to the cathedral of Burgos.
STEVE HOLROYD ALAMY
It should be noted that the Burgos exhibition brings together
pieces of great historical and archaeological value, but not very showy
.
Brought from all over Spain, yes, and not only from Castilla y León, as in other editions.
The customary lure of great figures and masterpieces is postponed to the deliveries of Carrión de los Condes and Sahagún.
Practical Guide
The
Lux
exhibition , from Las Adades del Hombre
, will be open until December 19, 2021 at the following venues: Cathedral of Santa María de Burgos;
Church of Santa María del Camino and Church of Santiago, in Carrión de los Condes, and Sanctuary of La Peregrina and Church of San Tirso, in Sahagún
Hours:
Tuesday to Friday, from 10:00 to 14:00 and from 16:00 to 20:00;
Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, from 10:00 to 20:00 (Burgos).
Tuesday to Friday, from 10.30am to 2.30pm and from 4.15pm to 8.15pm;
Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, from 10:30 to 20:30 (Carrión and Sahagún).
Information and reservations:
947 07 00 22/979 04 00 88/987 04 20 56
Museum of Human Evolution (MEH),
in Burgos: Paseo de la Sierra de Atapuerca, 2.
Information, reservations and groups:
902 02 42 46
Separate exhibition, an "official" visit to the birthday temple is essential. Because there are things that must be seen: like the popular
Flycatcher
, a rather simple automaton-clock in the central nave;
the tomb of the Cid and his wife
, Doña Jimena, under the dome;
the Golden Staircase by Diego de Siloé
; the
monumental reliefs of Felipe Bigarny
in the ambulatory; the grandiose
chapel of the Constables
, with a cornered Magdalene who is attributed to
Leonardo da Vinci
… Thanks to the heap of exquisite altarpieces and sculptures, scattered over 14 chapels, one can overcome the feeling of being in a cemetery. Or in a pantheon of illustrious men. It is advisable in any case to look up, especially under the dome or in the Chapel of the Constables: the stone lace that projects and filters the overhead light is a definitive argument for the virtues of the triumphant Gothic. For logistical reasons (and prevention of covid), access to
the Santo Cristo de Burgos chapel
is out of the circuit
.
A miraculous and miraculous image, with human hair (which grows, according to pious tradition) and animal skin, much loved in the city, and whose devotion even overflowed to the lands of America, where artisan families continue to reproduce their icon together with the famous "harquebusier angels" and other saints and virgins.
Rafael Alberti
felt himself crushed under the skirts of that Christ: "It seems, my only friend, / that I am under a black willow tree."
Alberti, by the way, toured the province of Burgos in the summer of 1925, together with his brother, as a wine representative, very young himself, and left a unique verse guide to the province
(The Lover)
written
.
enlarge photo The Maria Magdalena by Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, in the cathedral of Burgos.
JORIS VAN OSTAEYEN alamy
Burgos has changed, not only because of the weather, not only since the days of the wine seller Alberti. We talked about much earlier. From remote eras explained in the magnificent
Museum of Human Evolution (MEH)
. The set of buildings (three, actually) was directed by the architect-painter
Juan Navarro Baldeweg
so that from the large windows you can see the cathedral, just opposite, on the other side of the Arlanzón river. By the way, the museum is a cultural engine, and these days it contributes to the cathedral anniversary with a desirable display of paintings and engravings from the cathedral by various artists, some as illustrious as
Joaquín Sorolla
.
What has not changed is the city's domestic “living room”, that is, the Paseo del Espolón, aide to the river and its trail of freshness. But the showcase of sweet temptations on its shore has changed, and a lot, full of venues for all budgets and tastes. Even for the most demanding palates. See if not (or try them, better) the delicacies of Isabel Álvarez, owner and chef of the restaurant
En Tiempos de Maricastaña
.
Between the Paseo del Espolón and the Plaza del Ayuntamiento a
medieval knot of streets and alleys
(some without exit), squares, arcades ... It is known as
La Senda de los Elefantes
, so called, according to Álex Grijelmo, because from there everything bug comes out with a trunk. Those who also want to take back home the flavors of Burgos will find dozens of stores in the entire cathedral area where they can buy, not only the
obligatory black pudding
(some shop window advertises "signature black pudding"), but also
wild boar or deer chorizo. , venison sausage, cured cured meat, black pudding or lamb pate, ham caviar
... Not to mention
cheeses
(soft or "Burgos", beer, truffle ...),
Ribera de Duero wines
or, in another register, the
Burgos cake, yemas, perrunillas, nun's nipples, artisan chocolates
...
Antonio José, the Burgos musician (1902-1936), is a name that nobody, or almost, wants to remember.
On the other hand, the Cid Campeador does not need the recent television promotion or Byzantine disputes about errors or historical successes of the Amazon Prime series.
Don Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar,
El Cid,
rambles everywhere, even in confectioneries or haberdasheries.
Sell.
Exhibition of 'The Ages of Man' in the church of San Tirso de Sahagún.
THE AGES OF MAN FOUNDATION
Carrión, second stop
The 90 kilometers from Burgos to Carrión de los Condes can be done comfortably on the
Camino de Santiago highway (A-12).
Also by the
national road N-120
, which strictly adheres to the pilgrims' path. The problem is that in this case one runs into many towns, many speed limits and more civil guards than towns. There is an additional thread that connects Burgos with Carrión de los Condes: it is
the legend of El Cid
. From Carrión were the villainous counts who, according to the
Cantar de Mio Cid
, would have married and then outraged the daughters of Don Rodrigo in the oak grove of Corpes. Apparently, all an infundio, a
fake
to bad idea of Castilian against Leonese. The fact is that in Carrión, in the
Monastery of San Zoilo,
is the pantheon of those counts and their family.
The monastery, at the entrance to the town, is now
a luxurious hotel
with a large and well-shaded car park that should be taken advantage of, because in the urban area it is impossible to find a space.
Even if you are not a hotel guest, you can visit the beautiful Gothic cloister, the church and sacristy, the county pantheon, all duly musealized.
enlarge photo The ceiling of the monastery of San Zoilo, in Carrión de los Condes (Palencia).
DEAGOSTINI getty images
And then, on foot, after crossing the Mayor bridge over the Carrión river, look for the Camino, which is none other than the Calle Mayor that crosses the town of Palencia from end to end. What to say about this place? Better that the writer
Jesús Torbado
say it, with pious circumlocution
: “The carrion drivers of the last century (…) have been renouncing a glorious past, forgetting it at least, and have been eager to remodel their town in such a way that they no longer not even his mother recognizes him. (…) Those who arrive feel sorry (…) when contemplating how a historic center has become a modernizing town, where the line of prosperity is marked by the ugly, the irregular, the vain, even the pretentious ”
(Pueblos de España ,
1994).
At the start of Calle Mayor-Camino is the
church of Santa María del Camino
. And a little further on, on the same road, the
church of Santiago
. Both Romanesque, and crushed, and chosen to host individual chapters of
The Ages of Man
.
Brief but irrefutable samples.
Here, yes, the bottle of essences is uncovered and the collected works are pieces of first swords, with the common link of the figure of the Virgin, divine pilgrim. In Santa María you can see works by
Pedro and Alonso Berruguete, Gregorio Fernández, Pedro de Mena, Juan de Juni, Luca Giordano
… In Santiago, whose portico features a frieze with a pantocrator that is a masterpiece of Romanesque sculpture, some of the aforementioned artists are joined by the names of
Fernando Gallego, Felipe Bigarny, Gil de Siloé, Hans Memling, Alonso Cano…
Between both temples, and in the same street as Santa María, is the
birthplace of the Marqués de Santillana
, a warrior and writer of the 15th century, one of our first humanists, author of some
spicy
Serranillas
that anticipate the erotic lanterns of a Giacomo Casanova .
Before there was another illustrious countryman, Don Sem Tob de Carrión, rabbi in the fourteenth century of a defunct synagogue.
He is also a poet and author of some
moral Proverbs
that are one of the first monuments of Hispanic literature.
enlarge photo 'The Virgin of the Assumption', attributed to Pedro Correas, currently exhibited in the church of San Tirso de Sahagún.
THE AGES OF MAN FOUNDATION
Sahagún, cradle of the Mudejar
From Carrión to Sahagún, about 40 kilometers to the west,
the landscape changes, softens.
The undulations, the stains of greenery thicken, and the yellow of the sunflowers explodes between the gilding of the old altarpiece of the harvested harvest.
The said words of Torbado can be applied to the people of Sahagún, only worse here.
The destruction of its temples and monasteries
has been tried to alleviate through sophisticated orthopedics, but the urban bargain that surrounds the monuments remains disastrous.
And yet this place is for some experts the
cradle of that unique architecture of our country that is Mudejar.
According to Professor Pedro Lavado Paradinas, the so-called “brick Romanesque” (later also the brick Gothic) would have been born in the countryside by the abduction of stonemasons and money, by the cities, to build the great cathedrals
(Mudejar art ,
2000).
Without detracting from his thesis, an "ecological" explanation seems more plausible;
that is to say, it began to be built with brick simply because it is what there was here: clay and not stone.
The first focus of the latericio "fire" would be here, on the side of the Camino de Santiago: "Then there is Sahagún, lavish in all sorts of goods, and where the meadow is located in which, nailed the spears of the Lord's champions, says they flourished. "
This is how the
Codex Calixtinus
alludes
to the legend according to which the poplars of the river Cea would be green pikes of the hosts of Charlemagne, supposedly a pilgrim to Santiago.
enlarge photo The church of San Lorenzo, in the Leonese town of Sahagún.
GETTY IMAGES
Next to the river stood the richest and most powerful monastery in late medieval Spain,
that of San Facundo
(hence the name Sahagún). King
Alfonso VI,
who is buried in another nearby convent, made him head of the Castilian Benedictines and the engine of the Cluniac reform, which extended the Gothic style. Today there are barely a few roofed ruins and a large entrance arch, like a meteorite fallen from the sky.
Next to it are the two Sahagundense venues of
Las Edades…
: the
church of San Tirso
and the
hermitage of La Peregrina
. Also here, as in Carrión, the menu of works is exquisite to taste:
Pedro de Mena, La Roldana, Alonso Berruguete, Luis de Morales
… The hermitage or sanctuary of La Peregrina is a separate case. The rest of a disappeared monastery, in one of its chapels a superb sample of ataurique or polychrome Mudejar plasterwork shows, in one of its chapels: just seeing that relic pays off the trip.
In the center of the town, in addition to other brick churches, this time more whole, one can look for shops where to dispatch
a hare with beans, some leeks
(which are the star of local gastronomy), some
barbels and crabs
or a
suckling pig roast
. Or stock up on some amarguillos and other sweets through the Benedictine nuns' lathe, to follow the Mudejar trail of other nearby towns, crouched around their brick churches, well equipped. Humble temples, barely perched on fences and mud walls, like scary animals that blend in with the land so as not to arouse greed, in a Castilian horizon that has no escape.
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