Villages of Guadalajara, Spain: Labros

When one arrives at the vicinity of Labros, it is difficult to specify which image hits or surprises more: the vision of a people that curls like a snake on a hill, or the explicit perfection, precisely, of that hill under which it shelters . Perfect, or almost in its form, it would not be banal to wonder if in historical times it did not harbor a Celtiberian town or, failing that, time, inexorable and on more occasions than it should, terribly mocking, it would not hide under tons of land some forgotten prehistoric sanctuary.

It is evident that, when one reaches the top, he does not see any trace that encourages him to maintain the thought that the Celtiberians, accustomed to settle on the hilltops, would have housed a habitat in the place. Thing that, on the other hand, would not be strange, because if something highlights the Señorío de Molina is, precisely, by the profusion of Celtiberian castros discovered in its territory.

Suffice as an example, the Ceremeño, located in the nearby town of Herrerias or that other, barely visible and practically unexplored that, named Los Villares, is located in the municipality of Castellar de la Muela, not far, I guess, from the place where a hermitage rises that, according to some traditions, in times was Templar: the one of the Virgin of the Carrasca.

It is no novelty, either, that the most monolithic or prehistoric that can be located in Labros, sits on the highest part of the town. I am referring, obviously, to your parish priest who, although it does not seem so at first sight, still conserves - which is no small thing - a remarkable cover of his original Romanesque origins.

Some origins that, although belonging to that poor Romanesque with which some authors define the Romanesque of Guadalajara, still retains certain elements on which to make, at least, some questions, although they may be hypothetically negligible properly established.

The vision of these harpies, or perhaps those sirens that keep the young on their back, may not be too surprising in a style that used the symbolic and the mythological to educate, predictably in the facets of virtues and sins , black and white, sky and hell, to an extremely ignorant population, with no possibility of education and easily moldable, as prelates and gentlemen liked.

Not even in the presence of the eternal knots, magnificently carved, and their possible celtic roots would it be possible to be surprised either, since they are elements as common as the others, when no more. Now, when you see a lone rider who seems oblivious to the sequence shown by harpies, knots and sirens, one can not help but wonder if the hypothetical possibility of finding ourselves before an element theoretically rare in the Romanesque of the province -almost less, in my ignorance, I do not remember another-, as it can be that on which charismatic names fall as green knight or apocalyptic knight or, curling the cultural curl, knight cygnatus, in clear reference to a mythology, the Celtic, for nothing unknown in these mysterious lands.

It is true, also, that, regardless of the deterioration prevents clearly check the head of the animal riding the rider, it would lack a primordial element: the figure, well monstrous well human, often represented under the hooves of the horse, like of the traditional San Miguel doubling the Devil.

Without forgetting, of course, the symbolism that surrounds the figure of the horse, both in its function as a vehicle towards Knowledge, as a vehicle, also, of a chthonic order. Other mentionable details of this portico, may be its chessed motifs and another type of knot that, for example, is also located in the arcosolios of the apse of the parish church of Castrillo Solarana, a town belonging to the Silos environment, in Burgos.

The panorama from this height on which rises the parish of Labros, is also worthy of mention. It is especially striking, as a watercolor that alternates fields of work and fallow and some extension of scrub - typical Castilian chromatic - guarded, however in front, like an immutable and eternal shepherd, by another plateau in the shape of an inverted dish.

On the way back through those narrow streets, of houses that seem to support each other in solidarity, we may be surprised to find a curious engraving on the lintel of one of the oldest. An engraving that represents a heart and a jar. The solution to the enigma, we will find it -if we have not discovered it on our arrival- in a simple monument that the School of Folklore of Guadalajara has dedicated to one of the favorite sons of the place -Lorenzo Cetina (1644), foreseeably born in the aforementioned home- and all the Dulzaneiros who have brought joy to the ends of this earth.

Labros, a pleasant village in the confines of the Señorío de Molina.

NOTICE: although unpublished in Steemit, originally published in my blog GUADALAJARA WAY IS DONE WHEN WALKING. Both the text and the photographs are my exclusive intellectual property. The original entry, where you can check the authorship of juancar347, can be found at the following address: https://jcarlos347-juancar347.blogspot.com/2012/08/labros.html

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