Camino de Santiago: Puente la Reina. The bridge of the pilgrims

Beauty and symbolism, are part of that set of magical implications, which is the Camino de Santiago. It does not matter if one makes the 790 kilometers that must be traveled following the route of the so-called Camino Antiguo or Camino Francés, which leads from Roncesvalles to Santiago, or follows any other of the alternative routes -for example, crossing the dangerous port of San Adrián, Afterwards crossing the Alavesa Plain-, because all the roads, as the pilgrim is told, converge in a very specific place, where History, Legend and Tradition give each other a hug so close that sometimes the pilgrim, letting himself be carried away by the reverie, is not able to separate.

This special place is none other than the Navarre town of Puente la Reina. The one where the Templars had a church and a hospital -which still stand, and in the case of the second, still functioning, at least as a shelter-, called Santa Maria de los Huertos, although popularly known as the Church of the Crucifix -the what of that name, we will leave for the next entry, where still survive traces of a splendid and would say that histrionic esotericism.

Perhaps, one of the most beautiful and esoteric traces at the same time, for which it is worth starting to speak, is none other than the Romanesque bridge, called 'of the pilgrims', which connects the city with the other side of the Arga River. You know, the river where the friendly bird Txori collected water with his beak to clean the missing image of the Virgin that was next to it, now disappeared, according to a flowery legend.

A river, the Arga and some people, the Navarrese, who for the personal reasons that they were, did not like Aymeric Picaud and thus consigned it in his famous Codex Calistinus or Guide of the pilgrim that goes to Santiago. Of the barbarism of the Navarrese, I do not think it was absolutely different from what anyone could find, pilgrim or not, in other regions, in a Middle Ages that fought hard against that peninsular half ruled by the Caliphate of Córdoba and perhaps also with less zeal but with more self-pride, with the other half seeking unification under reigns to which everyone thought to have consanguineous rights. The waters of the river Arga, may nowadays, seduced by this industrial and scoundrel ‘donjuan’ called pollution, are not highly recommended for consumption, but I doubt very much, also, that it was like this in the medieval times in which Picaud wrote his Codex.

The bridge, however, is a work of art and continues more or less the same as when it was built, back in the 11th and 12th centuries. It is one of the typical bridges of the Camino, with its hump shape of 'ass' characteristic, in which the pilgrim, when leaving the city to continue his long journey, ascends by one bank and descends by the other, in which symbolically it could be considered as 'reaching heaven and descending to earth'.

designed by: @txatxy / @talentclub