By Itxu Díaz
Sunday, February 21, 2021
A few days ago, I arrived at Santiago de Compostela, in
northwestern Spain. This is where the tomb of the Apostle St. James the Greater
lies. Every time July 25 falls on a Sunday, Catholics celebrate their Jacobean
Holy Year. And that is precisely what happens in 2021. I’ve been on pilgrimage
here before, and by now, the Camino de Santiago that crosses Europe would
normally be packed with pilgrims from all over the world. This year, however, I
find closed hostels, bars with the shutters down, and a shuddering silence that
hangs over the World Heritage Site that is this old town. There are no tasty
vapors wafting from the seafood restaurants, there are no tourists drinking albariño as if it were water, and there
is no trace of those blonde central European pilgrims who brighten up the road
and provoke waves of sudden conversions as they pass by. Really, there are no
pilgrims from anywhere, because the pandemic restrictions are ruining
everything. The narrow streets of the small town of Santiago today are hushed
by a veil of mystery that seems straight from a Hitchcock movie, only broken on
occasion by the exasperated cry of Galician bagpipes.
In the cathedral, gloom and Gregorian. A couple of ladies
pray in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, some priests wait in the
confessional to attend, in a multitude of languages, the pilgrims who do not
arrive, and a madman crosses the main nave talking to himself and gesticulating
wildly. Suddenly, he stops in silence in front of the image of the Apostle,
where he prays in silence for a few minutes and seems to regain his sanity.
This strange and solitary climate has allowed me to spend
more than 20 minutes in the small crypt, with no other company than the silver
urn that houses the remains of the Apostle, without the usual hustle and bustle
of visitors. Normally it would be impossible to pray on your knees here without
feeling a burst of light hitting the back of your head every other second.
(This light, it should be noted, does not often come from the Holy Spirit, but
from the cameras of Japanese tourists.)
The whole cathedral is awe-inspiring. Contemplation of
the Portico de la Gloria, a Romanesque masterpiece, enlightens the pilgrim on
the mysteries of faith: the original sin, the Redemption, and the Last
Judgment. But none of it carries the same significance if we ignore the origin
of this pilgrimage center, raised in a remote and rainy place of rural Galicia.
According to tradition, Santiago preached Christianity in
Hispania (present-day Spain and Portugal), after Pentecost. However, the
Spaniards did not receive the Apostle with the solemnity he deserved, and we
even failed to comply with the most elementary rules of courtesy: In all
honesty, we stoned him (though not fatally).
According to stories from the 13th century, the saint got
more than a bit exasperated with our closed-mindedness, and it was then that
the Virgin Mary appeared to him standing on a marble pillar. It was the year 40
a.d. and the Virgin, who was still alive in the flesh, asked Santiago to build
a church there, which today is the Basilica del Pilar in Zaragoza, the first
temple in the world dedicated to Our Lady. The apparition may not have
surprised James, who had already seen the resurrection of Jairus’s daughter,
had witnessed the Transfiguration, had spoken with the Risen Jesus, and had
marveled at the miraculous catch of fish in the Sea of Tiberias. But in later
centuries, the memory of this experience encouraged Christians in their
struggle against the invading Islam.
Back in Palestine, Santiago was beheaded by Herod
Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great, the one from the Massacre of the
Innocents, which just goes to show that there is no such thing as a good Herod.
According to tradition, the corpse of the Apostle was moved to and buried in
Spain, where in the northwest of the country, the passage of time and the mess
of history covered over his tracks. Men are too often more concerned with
tearing one another’s skin to shreds than with protecting their relics.
In the same place where his trail was lost, one night in
the ninth century, when no one remembered the tomb of the Apostle, a peasant
named Pelayo saw in the sky a spectacular light show that came to a full stop
over the forest. In a show of good judgment, Pelayo took himself for a madman.
But it just so happened that the rest of the area’s inhabitants had also seen
the lights, and Pelayo was impelled to give testimony to the bishop in that
region, Teodomiro, who prayed and fasted for three days — they took their job
very seriously back then — and went out to investigate the forest, where he
discovered the tomb of the Apostle. The news spread throughout the West at the
speed of WhatsApp.
The miracle of the Apostle gave the Christians a crucial
impulse to recover Spain, which had been subjected to Islamic rule. But you
would be very wrong to believe that the story of the present cathedral, with
its thousands of pilgrims, is a fairy tale. The Moors got pretty angry with
Santiago because he had nurtured the faith of the Christians. Thus, in 997, the
bloodthirsty Almanzor destroyed the cathedral and stole its two bells, as if he
were a drunken German tourist visiting modern-day Venice. For reasons unknown,
the Moors did not dare touch the tomb of the Apostle, so the Spaniards
continued their pilgrimage to the ruins of the cathedral. You see, Christians
have adopted the cross as their symbol, so it bears reason that they’re not
easily discouraged.
In some strange way, we could say that Almanzor was the
first architect of the current Cathedral of Santiago, because thanks to his
destruction, the majestic temple we know today was built a century later. By
the way: The two bells stolen by Almanzor were returned to their rightful place
two centuries later, as were the Moors, who also returned home some time later,
in 1492, when the Reconquest ended; although the bells put up less resistance.
In the 14th century — I don’t think Dr. Fauci had been
born yet — epidemics prevented further pilgrimages to Santiago, although the
route had already begun its decline after Luther’s criticisms. In the 16th
century, the English pirate Francis Drake spent his days plundering La Coruña,
my hometown, very close to Santiago. It took some time for the people of La
Coruña to run the invaders out of town, but one day, perhaps under the
influence of rum, Drake boasted that he would soon destroy the city of Santiago
de Compostela and reduce the reliquary of the Apostle to ashes. The archbishop
of Santiago, in a panic, hid the remains of the Apostle. He hid them and kept
the secret so well (he died without saying where they were) that no one was
able to find them again until 1877, when it occurred to someone to dig in the
only place where they had not yet looked (and to be honest, the first place
where I would have done it): behind the main altar. Lo and behold, there it
was. And so the great pilgrimages resumed.
Pope Saint John Paul II was the first pope to make
pilgrimages to Santiago, in 1982 and 1989, revitalizing the Camino de Santiago.
The words he spoke here still move us: “I, from Santiago, send you, old Europe,
a cry full of love: find yourself again. Be yourself. Discover your origins.
Revive your roots. You can still be a beacon of civilization and a stimulus of
progress for the world.”
Although today the restrictions keep the hostels closed,
the locals tell me that they will be opened in spring. There are also virtual
pilgrimages, as well as the option of lighting candles to the Apostle from the
cathedral’s website. In the midst of the pandemic, Pope Francis wanted to make
a gesture to the frustrated pilgrims and to Santiago by announcing the
exceptional expansion of the Jubilee Year, so that 2022 will also be a
Compostelan Holy Year.
There is something miraculous in the air here. Many set
out agnostic to do the Camino and return as converts. Others find meaning for
their lives. Most of the obese pilgrims come back slim after 200, 300, or even
800 kilometers by foot (I’m not sure there is anything supernatural about that
though). And the cathedral archives document hundreds of miracles attributed to
the Apostle in this heavenly place, which also boasts the survival of several
foiled attacks, including Paulo Coelho’s pilgrimage and the terrifying book
that spawned from the experience.
I leave here, finally, caught somewhere between sadness and euphoria, between the empty and melancholic city, and the privilege of having been able to be here at all and tell its story. Santiago de Compostela has been a bulwark of Western Christianity since the Middle Ages, appearing during times of hardship, and, glancing towards the horizon, I suspect that we need it today more than ever. Let us, at least, embark on this pilgrimage in our hearts until we are able to do it by foot.
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