'At the root of history there is a cosmic force that drives man to the west, something that transcends it and is inscribed in the myth'. (1)

Shortly after the song of the rooster, it is a saying, the Wayfarer crosses the main street of a small town Zamorano, called El Campillo. As usual, the town does not see a soul, except for-and in this the Wayfarer, use of Buddhist beliefs-that of a dog, whose barking-molestos, although they are still a detail, that a customary strength can be considered traditional - they break the magic of a silence, which could well be compared to that angels that precede the singing of monks in monasteries like Silos.

The Wayfarer thinks-ignorant of the barking of the dog, that tiresome pursues him a few meters up the street-that perhaps, just maybe, is in such banal details as this one, where the popular origin that refers to the pass may be found. of an angel, when between two or more conversationalists, you reach a dead point in which silence becomes the protagonist and at the same time moderator. Silence, after all, he thinks, is the sleeping voice of History: that enchanted princess, who dreams of the kiss that releases the memory and records the annals of his life. It is an idea that assaults him again, barely a few meters above, when he locates, sleeping and silent, like the princess of the story, one of the reasons for his trip: the Visigoth church of San Pedro de la Nave.

His silence, however, the Wayfarer thinks, is a thunderous scream that, paradoxically, repeats itself over the centuries, without its persistence breaking another mold, in the minds of men, than that of passing by and having a beautiful memory. The Wayfarer, after all, does not stop being a man; and although he tries to remove from his mind, details in the background, so superficial, as those which differentiate the true traveler from the simple tourist, he can not avoid, however, letting himself be carried away by the force of habit, throwing on his shoulders those simulators of eternity, which are the cameras, to continue the contemplation of the wonder that lies before you, with the angular mind of a photographer.

From angle to angle, then, it becomes, comparatively speaking, the star king, which begins its journey through the east, to return to the point of destination that, a few minutes later, paradoxically or relatively, depending on what is seen, becomes the west, and therefore, symbolizes that decline that the pilgrim so imperiously pursues. In his journey, he has been able to admire the perfect placement of some ashlars that give off an unmistakable old smell; a stone carved with the sweat of a Pythagorean forehead, that knows the importance of the number and applies it to raise a work of Art in whose basic equation conjugate, among other sublime characteristics, weight, measure, proportion, restraint and balance, capable of to move even the most rusted springs of the human soul.

Human are, on the other hand, the external manifestations with which, in a timeless way, curious and pilgrims have violated the original sandstone of the ashlars, to leave a testimony of their passage through the place. A human testimony, oblivious to a perfection that no longer seems of this world, that under its condition of graffiti, it may obey a desire to endure; I wish that, obviously, it is far from being a characteristic in the human race.

The Wayfarer wonders, how many generations have not been born and died this temple, both from its original position-two kilometers from here, on the other side of the River Esla-as this, which was transferred stone to stone in those sixties, in which the swamp fever was doing more damage in our historical-artistic monuments, than any of the multiple raids organized from the Cordovan Caliphate, in the times of greatest splendor of the Muslim domination in the Peninsula. To put a simile, in the mind of the Wayfarer the idea takes shape that, if Almanzor was the scourge of God, the Hydrological Plan devised by Franco and his ministers, was the scourge of their temples.

But far from the Walker's mind to do politics. And less about Zamora. As soon as he manages to contact the person in charge of the temple, named Abilio -and not thanks to Vodafone, precisely, that in the vicinity of the temple, he only offers the client emergency calls-, on the head of the Walker, the dark ones return Swallows that determined not only their rejection, but also their indignation during the intense day of the previous day, while kicking the capital from temple to temple.

Dark swallows, it is true, that, unlike those that tormented the poet and never returned to Seville, they, sent by the Epic of Zamora, always return, with their veiled threat, demanding the personal data of the visitor, you know with what dark and anti-democratic intention. The Walker shivers his guts, but he understands those who are just errands. That is why he does not argue with Abilio, and he agrees - as peacefully as his contained anger allows him - to consign his personal data in a list, in which, incidentally, that day he has the displeasure of being able to affirm that he was the first to be released , to be able to take pictures of the interior.

While consigning your personal data -the real ones, that after all the Wayfarer, unlike the Epic of Zamora, you can say very loudly that you visit places as God intended, with education and respect and in many cases, leaving friends after himself- he wonders if in this question, the Provincial Council of Zamora does not take action on the matter; and since it seems that it does not, it is asked, also, why, then, the information and tourism offices of Zamora, do not vary the slogans that sponsor the cultural values of the region, adding the certain provincial tagline unkind to the tourist and the visitor (2).

Once the process has been completed, the Wayfarer can not help but think that he is immersed in a world of symmetrical proportions, where sacred geometry unfolds before his eyes with the precision of multiplication tables - I am reminded, perhaps, of those Tables of the Law collected by Moses on the summit of Mount Sinai? - who are teaching him, as in his school days, the magic of numbers that do not lack or spare anything, because they are consigned to a command that defines his just measurement, obeying the purpose of perfection in which the mind of the magister who designed the temple was inspired.

A temple that, internally transformed into a basilica, elevates its central pillars towards an interior firmament, in which light and shade harmoniously combine, to the point of resembling - or at least, simulating it in the imagination of the Wayfarer - stars that mark a pilgrimage route through the golden universe on which its semicircular arches unfold. Halfway between the ground and the earth, the beauty implied in the capitals, shows part of some old stories, full of symbolic dynamism: Daniel and the lions, the sacrifice of Abraham, the birds that peck, who knows, maybe a tree of life that, in the end, fulfills its primordial function of nexus between earth and sky, together with typically Visigoth and Celtic motifs, which form friezes in which the cross is also alternated. A type of cross, more elaborate than the rough wood on which a Christ remains weightless, beyond a presbytery through whose narrow windows, a diffuse clarity rivals shadows protected by silence.

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NOTICE: originally posted on my blog MEMORIES OF A PILGRIM. Both the text, as the photographs, and the video (except music, reproduced under a YouTube license), are my exclusive intellectual property. The original entry, where you can check the authorship of juancar347, can be found at the following address: https://jc347.blogspot.com/2013/03/una-joya-en-el-camino-portugues-la.html

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