Art, Travel and Culture: Barbadillo del Mercado, a town of legend

Barbadillo del Mercado, is one of many small towns located at the foot of the national road 234, which connects Burgos with Soria.

At a first glance, anyone could think, that after all, Barbadillo does not stand out much of the other towns that he has left behind in his path.

And perhaps, objectively speaking, so be it in reality. But objective and at the same time subjectively speaking also, Barbadillo del Mercado, unlike the rest, counts in his historical record with the honor of being part of another legend, likewise related to the Grail stories: that of the Seven Infants of Lara.

Fief of Doña Lambra was here where the misfortune of the infants was created, when this one, in complicity with Ruy Velásquez -some sources mention him as husband, although others make her second wife of Gonzalo de Lara and therefore, stepmother of the infants-, hatched their misfortune, as payment for a supposed affront.

Whether or not it is true, it seems that the wrath of the patriarch of the Lara - I remember, that the same name had Ginés, who is supposed to be the last Templar of the Soria monastery of Santo Polo and ended his days right here , in the most inaccessible part of the Sierra de la Demanda, perhaps in the convent of Alveinte, in whose ruins there are still those who say, dragged by the wind, the old saying: 'Templar, what did you do that Alveinte came'? -, It was terrible and in the center of the town, where the scroll or the medieval pillory still stands where justice was imparted, the story of Jesus and the adulterous woman was repeated.

With the difference that he did not appear to say that the one who is free from sin throws the first stone and the 'adulteress', in this case - for rest of the female collective suffered -, was not, if not, the aforementioned Ruy Velásquez , who paid his boldness with life, in such a violent and macabre way.

Legend has it that due to the quantity, quality, variety and taste Spain has to admit that it has a treasure, that Doña Lambra died drowned in the Laguna Negra, although unfortunately she does not specify if her spirit remained as mistress custody of the gold comb of the nymph persecuted by those of Vinuesa who dwell in its depths, nor even if its spirit accompanies the spirit of the unfortunate Alvargonzález, murdered and thrown into the cold waters by his criminal children.

Outside the urban area and closer to 'a bare, gray mountain, a leaden wall covered with bushes and holm oaks' - a description aptly confiscated from Don Ramón Menendez Pidal, although he did not have to know the vineyards that are currently there - the most interesting and with the personal addition that observing it gives the feeling that time had stopped in a dark and indeterminate moment, a solitary hermitage, that of San Juan, proclaims to the four winds that beat her, her right to draw attention , being one of the oldest historical elements of the area and by affection or default of its apparent humility, one of the most interesting as well.

Because of its shape, having as frame that peeling and gray 'Pidaliana' mountain and exercising the right to take hold of the joker of the imagination, one could think of a suitable Mount Ararat at the foot of whose slope and after uncertain vicissitudes, an ark would have run aground for the rest of his life.

NOTICE: both the text and the photographs belong to my exclusive intellectual property. The text, is a small excerpt from my article Peter Pan was here: a story of the Sierra de la Demanda (Reposition, First Part), which can be found at the following address: https://steemit.com/spanish/@ juancar347 / peter-pan-was-here-a-history-of-the-sierra-de-la-demanda-reposicion-primera-parte.

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