Bonabal, the mysterious ruins of a Cistercian monastery

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There is something decidedly supernatural in the historical ruins that make them seem, in some cases, a kind of beacon, metaphorically speaking, which attracts irremissibly when not melancholy, attention to that aspect of contemplative metaphysics, where sensitivity constitutes an open door to the imagination.

It is not surprising, therefore, that architects of the genius of the Catalan Antonio Gaudí, find in them or by default, in some of them, sufficient inspiration to combine the greatness of the architecture of the past, with the fantasy of the architecture of the future .

Places, like this memory of what once was a splendid monastery of the Order of the Cistercian located in the heart of Castilla la Nueva, do not fit any doubt, is one of them.

Even considering myself a deductive and marginal person, not very fond of digging in the general lines of history, I will make a small paragraph, with the sole intention of putting them in the background, making - and for that I call on your imagination - that they try to go back ten centuries in time and are situated in that distant year of 1164, when King Alfonso VIII gave up this magnificent valley in which he sits, to that Benedictine split that were the monks of the Cister.

It is also added - and I hope not to tire you with this historical introduction - that the first monks who settled approximately one kilometer away from what today constitutes the municipality of a beautiful mountain town, called Retiendas, came from the monastery Valladolid from Santa María de Vallbuena.

If you look, you will see, in the background, some correspondence between the names of Bonabal and Vallbuena, as conveniently broken down, they refer to the special characteristics of the places where they settle; that is to say, to the providence of resources and the courtesies of a place, which would come to show, after all, that the monasteries did not rise but over places that were to offer more than just resources worthy of survival.

There are no paved roads, that take the curious, the traveler, the pilgrim or even the adventurer, to the soulless entrance of the old monastery, but nice regional roads, hard to travel in winter, when the heavy snow falls with all their fury on the mountain range on which it sits, but flowery in spring and with enough leafiness, to provide shade and freshness in the heavy walks of summers.

It may not seem so now, but at the origins of these marvelous ruins, there is also the history of a town: a town that began to recover its ancient right to live on its own country, snatching it from the invading agareno that centuries before had snatched away from those dynasties of Visigoth kings, whose courtly intrigues had succumbed to an entire empire.

With the habitability permit of these lands, King Alfonso VIII not only made sure to leave behind some monks who, unlike the nobles, would never rebel against him, but also ensured the proper installation of settlers, whose permanence would ensure the consolidation of some kingdoms, in whose destiny the key word began to interweave: Castile.

The monastery of Bonabal, like many other monasteries, either Benedictine or Cistercian, also enjoyed numerous privileges and riches, which were carried by the furious winds of history, which began to blow with an unprecedented force from 1821, with the called liberal triennium.

As usual with all confiscation, this historic and artistic place was sold to private hands, whose neglect and ignorance, ended up carrying out the work of destruction of what we could qualify as one of the purest and most sensitive examples of Cistercian art of the entire Iberian Peninsula.

Or what is the same: they threw down a magnificent conjunction of austerity, sensitivity, geometry and elegance that would have made it one of the most admired monasteries of those who rose in this ancient and little known community of Castilla La Mancha, which is Guadalajara

Believe it or not, it is worth taking a walk through these venerable ruins, feeling the beauty inherent in the place, getting carried away by reverie and even, challenging the dangers to an inconvenient stumbling or crumbling, set foot on the impressive, magnificent staircase of snail and access to the open sky, once the tower has disappeared, and to feel, as once and somewhere similar to it, Master Gaudí must have felt, part of a vital framework where to acquire ideas and knowledge, whispered in the ear by a restless muse, possibly called loneliness.

And another interesting fact to keep in mind: to this monastery of Bonabal, the old Cistercian monks came to finish their days, before being able to return to the bosom of Mother Earth.

As it has been said, just a kilometer or maybe less, separates these historic Cistercian ruins, from the town of Retiendas, a municipal term to which they belong.

NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property.

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