Art, Travel and Culture: return to Caracena

Introduction: Although the article was written in 2009, when I returned for the second time to Caracena, the photographs are current. They were taken last August, when, with an infinite pain in my heart, I returned to those ways of God, even to try to forget ghosts and return to congratulate myself with the adventure. The question is, after all, that there are places where it seems that Time takes a detour and they are always the same. Caracena, I assure you, he is one of them. Therefore, what I wrote in 2009, is still the same now, nine years later.

Located in a desolate place in the foothills of the Sierra de Pela, not devoid of beauty and magic, Caracena is one of the surviving corners of an authentic lost world; a world, which even today, after centuries, remains tied, immutably, to that imaginary port in the shape of an ivory horn, by which the ancient Greeks thought that dreams came.

In reality, it is still a dream to reach such an isolated place, and yet, so rich in nuances.
Incredible, on the other hand, it seems the detail that a place of such characteristics, creditor of so much history and so many associated mysteries, hardly counts on legends and traditions that, by force of being repeated from generation to generation, the Justice - sometimes so blind and unjust as History- has consented to grant a simple, but objective dowry of reality.

Part of that dowry, and in the absence of new discoveries that extend it and make it definitely attractive to that interested branch of Science, which is Archeology, is located in a nearby area, which corresponds to the name of Los Tolmos, where that pre protohistoria, wanted to preserve for the future the remains of a Bronze Age settlement.

From the time corresponding to the Roman conquest, it is known that they used as an important means of communication, the canyon formed, jointly, by two masters of the sculptural workshop of Mother Gaia: the river that bears the same name as the town, and that artist , endowed sometimes with a devilish genius called cierzo that, surely coming from the near and unfathomable caverns termestinas, undertook from the genesis the patient polishing action and to finish the work that that other one began.

Heirs of the Romans, the Arabs also used this road, being known the passage of Almanzor during the realization of many of the raids undertaken against the Christian kingdoms located further north.

To the point that, according to the most widespread legend and commented by neighbors and foreigners, the name of the town should, in fact, to the lament of the Saracen commander, which Boabdil in reference to Granada, lost the square when the Christians took advantage of the garrison was dining.

'Expensive dinner' (double signiticate), then, for a place that, despite everything, had considerable importance from the nebulae of the twelfth century, which already began to glimpse enough evidence to predict the reality of a Reconquista that would culminate two centuries later with the Catholic Monarchs and the famous tears of the mentioned Boabdil.

The twelfth century is also the two magnificent examples of Romanesque temples that, in an enviable state of conservation, have survived centuries of a national history, which has seen the ups and downs of more wars than good times, to the point that was famous the comment that assured that there had not been a generation of Spaniards who had not known a war: the church of Santa Maria and the church of San Pedro.

Being contemporary, it is certainly disconcerting to observe the characteristics of both. The one of Santa Maria, simple, of square ship, rough tower and lattices of probable Mudejar origin, without hardly more ornaments and scarce decoration. The one of San Pedro, National Monument that, among other characteristics, offers one of the best arcaded galleries of all the province; silent motifs and similar themes, although of lower quality, which can be seen in the church of Santa María de Tiermes, a detail by which some historians suppose the same school, but different master executor.

It is in this church, where lovers of mystery find payment for all kinds of arguments and theories aimed at offering a supposed relationship with the Temple. Actually, there is no historical evidence, not because it demonstrates its presence in the place, which would not be outlandish, but really had something to do with the church of San Pedro.

The supporters of such affiliation, based ninety percent of his thesis, on two specific objects: the strange figure that stands out in its apse, and that at first sight has nothing to do with the hunting description of the boar hunt that is observed in the sequence that precedes it, and fragments of a sepulchral slab, which are preserved inside the temple.

The figure in question, is identified with the famous Templar Baphomet, although there are authors who observe certain similarities with another figure no less enigmatic and also related to the esotericism inherent in the solstices: Janus. There are those who also observe, a probable although archaic representation of that Trinitarian mystery referred to the ages of man.

On the other hand, the slab he referred to suggests that it belonged to a Templar knight, because he describes that in the pertinent grave - in fact, it is not known where this was - a knight belonging to the bad sect lay, and The Temple, among other things, was tried and dissolved for heresy.

But it would be unfair to talk about a place like Caracena, and leave aside that other part, human, endearing and vital, which make up its many nuances. Like the vision of the cattle grazing peacefully in the mountains and streams adjacent to the town, guarded by the attentive look of the shepherd, from whose experience History could take advantage of numerous anecdotes that he ignores and that he would be happy to tell.

The middle-aged woman, furrowed with wrinkles and snowy streaks in her hair, spreading her clothes on a small meadow covered with bushes, located next to the jagged and unrecognizable ruins of what once was a hospital for pilgrims. The almost perfect cube of what should be a national monument, the medieval prison, the detachment of whose owner suggests that over time, its ashlars will become part of that crumbling pile of historic rubble that mark the province.

The vines hang from the balcony, waiting for the moment to turn into liquid gold that spills gently down its owner's throat. The river, sliding impassively at the bottom of the ravines, sweetly escorted by the whisper of the poplars that guard its banks.

The excursion to the nearby castle, one of the best preserved in the province, with its double defensive perimeter, which still keeps the ghostly authority of one of its most famous owners - Bishop Carrillo - and from whose walls, according to the gossips, the Saracen prisoners were thrown down.

The sad and tired look of the dog, lying in the sun next to the vain of a longeva wooden door, double leaf and ancestral aftertaste, barely respected by time and woodworm.

The hermitage of the Virgen del Monte, in complete solitude located on the outskirts of the town, awaiting the arrival of the third Sunday in June when the pilgrims descend on the shoulders of the owner, whose image, abandoned the Romanesque majestical trio, receives, gothicly standing to locals and strangers at the altar of the church of San Pedro.

Not to mention the remains of another small church, from whose ruins someone took the opportunity to build a shed in which to collect the cattle and keep the farm implements, and whose Virgin title, that of the Star, small but majestic, languishes behind of a showcase in the monastery of San Juan de Duero, next to the fragment of a tombstone that once covered the grave of a Jew named Abraham Satabi ...

History and Nuances: Caracena, a place you can not miss.

NOTICE: originally published on my blog SORIA WAYS WAY TO WALK, although the photographs are current. 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://juancar347.blogspot.com/2009/11/retorno-caracena.html

If you liked what you have read, I invite you to know the world of: @ juancar347

designed by: @txatxy

@talentclub