Asturias, beyond that Natural Paradise, where the nature lover is more than rewarded with its prodigal wonders and where the greed of the most demanding of gourmets is willingly tempted by the voluptuous call of exquisite and abundant viands, is also a Paradise for the Art lover in general, as well as the Mystery in particular, despite the inconveniences provoked in times of incendiary memory, whose fuse still coleates in the inventory of the metaphors 'snows of yesteryear', in which the French libertine poet, François Villon, took refuge when he tried to make reference to everything that has been lost: the Disentailment of Mendizábal, the War of Independence, the mining revolution of October 1934, and, of course, the Civil War, that tear that provoked in the soul of the poet those discouraging verses of 'Spaniard who come to the world, one of the two Spains has to freeze your heart', co n those of us who have lived on our shoulders for many generations and who seem to be still far from overcoming.

Another way, each and every one of these factors, to a greater or lesser extent, managed to get a rich Historical-Artistic and Cultural Patrimony, lost and scattered in good part, propitiatory victim of that vademecum of nonsense that always ensues , when the scales that balance good sense and good judgment are broken and force reigns over reason.

Undisputable losses of a cultural heritage, which nevertheless and in any way-after all, it may not be an excess of prudence to recognize that miracles, after all, may exist-have not disappeared altogether, and sometimes they make an appearance in the most unexpected moment and place, who knows if for the sole purpose of reminding us - Voltaire's emulators and illustrated in the fridges of rationalism - those wise words that Hamlet dedicated to his friend-beloved -as I would say the mystic Ramón Llull-Horacio: 'there are more things in heaven and on earth, than can be seen with the naked eye'.

That is to say, there are mysteries that defy all logic and that suppose a challenge donjuanesco to all adventurer or investigator that one day - you decide if you happen causally or - it is with them in any corner of its way.

Such would be the case, for example -without going any further and less close- of the magnificent and at the same time strange representations of some of the sculptures that illustrate - let's not forget, that stone was the book par excellence, before Gütemberg invented or reinventing the printing press, which was perhaps one of the few things that the Chinese did not copy-the interior capitals of a rural church, the one of Santa María, which, located in the mountain village of Villanueva de Teverga, sees life go by with monotonous languor -Calling conveniently to Verlaine- without more visits to the hours of matins, than those of a parishioner, who little or nothing already understands those symbols with which their ancestors communicated daily, even from the depths of that collective unconscious, ' discovered 'by CG Jung in modern times.

They did understand, however, and some of the oldest people in the area still remember it, the disasters of the war and the dynamite boreholes that blew up practically the entire church floor -romanica, for more, in the middle or end of the year. century XII- that make it impossible to get an idea of ​​the amount of archetypes turned into dust -including those of the original cover- that would have delighted any researcher. Now, incredible as it may seem - and I repeat again, that miracles may, after all, exist - the explosions did not seem to affect the columns and capitals of the interior, which offer us, as a whole, a treasure worthy to admire and study.

In fact - and you will allow me not to add more fuel to the fire, leaving it in that primordial state of 'things of peoples' - you can still notice, in the paintings of the apse -possibly, they are of the XVI or XVII centuries and have been made on top of previous ones, as has been demonstrated in more than one case in Asturias - the orifices of the rifle bullets, as a black historical testimony of what should be forgotten and not repeated, but on the other hand, if they received the sacrament of blessed lime, because nothing would happen either.

Leaving aside also, the considerations of Erwin Panowsky on the linearity of painting and Romanesque sculpture, what this enigmatic capital shows us, is an impenetrable representation, where beings with a human body but with a head and lower limbs of a bird seem to be carrying out some kind of dance or ritual, around a central figure.

And that reminds me - since the folklore of Asturias is very rich and varied in all kinds of extraordinary creatures - the ancient Platonic concepts about daimones, fleeting and marginal creatures, of which Plutarch affirmed, firmly convinced, that of: 'whoever denies the daimones, breaks the chain that unites men with the gods'. That is to say: what it would mean in the Christian equivalent, the figure of the messenger or mediator, angel or devil, and far from my pretensions is, I assure you, that of trying to emulate Dan Brown.

Both in one sense and another, Romanesque art is full of references, where birds play a fundamental role, both in one case and in the other - remember the mythological harpies, with the body of a bird and human head or the sirens, that they were originally represented as well, before the imagination endowed them with a beautiful tail of fish and in both cases, made them representatives of lust, promiscuity and sin-as messengers or representatives of the human soul, as opposed to the butterfly in which the ancient Greeks saw the prefiguration of the soul or psyche.

It could also happen - given that the type of sculpture represented on these capitals, could very well reach the other side of the Pyrenees, following the complicated paths of the primitive route of Santiago, which was done by the coast and was harder but safer faced with the continuous threat of the Muslims - that in a purely objective aspect, it would represent shamans with their traditional masks, a detail that would not be strange, as a claim to the evangelization of the warlike Asturians, anchored in their ancient proto-Celtic roots, whose precedent we found two kilometers below, in the town of La Plaza and a curious pre-Romanesque capital existing inside the collegiate church of San Pedro, which would fulfill the ancestral belief of the 'magic flight' - metaphorically speaking - where the shaman was supposed to leave his physical body and 'flew' with his soul as if he were a bird.

It could be, on the contrary, that it constituted a hallmark or sign of identification of those secret brotherhoods of stonemasons that, under the name of 'Sons of Maitre Jacques' or 'Sons of Master Santiago', put their skills and knowledge at the service of a elevated ideal, leaving numerous keys and secrets along the way, which today, are practically impossible to decipher, which used to have as 'signature', the Rune of Life or pata de oca.

Or perhaps, rushing other speculations, although it seems less likely, a reference to medieval doctors, who were provided with a similar outfit, during the terrible epidemics of plague.

Be that as it may, and apart from the conclusion drawn by each one, the truth is that Romanesque art, after all - and generalize - constitutes a fascinating universe for speculation; and despite everything that has been lost, Spain continues to have a heritage in that sense, truly worthy of admiration.

NOTICE: Both the text and the photographs that accompany it are my exclusive intellectual property.

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[Martial, latin poet]

Ars vtinam more Animvm qve effingere. Posses pulchrior in ter. Ris nvlla tabella foret.

Arte Ojala pudieras representar. el carácter y el espíritu. No habría sobre la tierra. Imagen más bella

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