Iberia

by James A. Michener

  Why do I like Romanesque buildings so much? Why do I prefer them to Gothic? Or baroque? Or Corinthian? I can’t say, but I suppose it’s for the same reason that I prefer Brahms to Schubert or Keats to Shelley. When I see a fine example of Romanesque, I feel that I am in the presence of the very best that an age could accomplish, and it was an age that accomplished much. I am at the well-springs of art, those solid beginnings without which no later art could have achieved much. I am standing with stonemasons who saw things simply and who resisted the temptation of flying off at strange tangents. There is something perpetually clean and honorable about the best Romanesque, and when I see it my whole being responds, as if the artisans who perfected this style were working for me alone. I hear voices singing in plainsong, or the oboes of Pamplona playing without harmony. I am in a different age, with a different set of values, and I find its simplicity exactly to my taste. The separatism of Martin Luther, which is to come, does not yet assault me or confuse. From those first days in northern Spain when I saw Romanesque at its best, I have known that this was an architecture put aside and saved until I should come along; in a strange city I can almost smell on the evening breeze those quarters of the town that house great monuments in this style; but never have I seen any that have seemed more beautiful to me than the recently uncovered cloisters of San Isidoro.

  Yet how strange travel can be. Even as I formulated these judgments, which in a sense constitute a condemnation of the Gothic, which I have never appreciated or understood, I was about to be shown this style at its most exquisite, and to have had these two experiences side by side, in a city where I had least expected either, still overwhelms me.

  It was a surprise that Father Viñayo had arranged. We dined extremely late, I remember, and it must have been toward two in the morning, when I was about to go to bed, that the marqués said, ‘Father Viñayo has a little surprise for us. Are you game?’ I would have been ashamed to back down at such a moment, so I accompanied the learned priest into the summer night and walked some distance to León’s cathedral. There was a partial moon, and in the looming darkness we began gradually to make out the spires of what Father Viñayo said was Spain’s purest and simplest Gothic building. In the night it looked like an ordinary Gothic church, plain yet soaring, controlled but with a certain flamboyance. Its two towers were well proportioned and its transept was prominent enough to be a little cathedral in itself. If one appreciated an unornate Gothic, León’s cathedral would be above average but no more.

  But as I studied the building in the starry night, with León sleeping around me, one of Father Viñayo’s assistants inside the cathedral threw a switch, and from different vantage points around the square, large floodlights came on, and the sudden transition from shadowy gray to brilliant whiteness was startling, and I saw for the first time the feature that makes León unique among the world’s cathedrals: more than half its exterior surface is composed of glass. It is a symphony of windows, and where the ordinary cathedral might have six, León has one hundred and twenty-five, plus fifty-seven circular ones and three gigantic roses. At first sight it seems impossible that a massive stone building could contain so much glass and still stand.

  Father Viñayo led us inside, and as we looked up we saw, illuminated from outside, the famous stained-glass windows, one atop the other, then others on top of them. I am not speaking of small windows, but of full-sized ones twenty and thirty feet high, each composed of myriads of pieces of colored glass. The apse was a true miracle. It was when he saw this cascade of windows that the future Pope John XXIII exclaimed, ‘León has more glass than stone and more faith than glass.’

  As I stood in the silence of the night and the vastness of this huge building, I recalled my conclusions at San Isidoro, and while I did not retract any of my love for the Romanesque, I had to soften my criticism of its descendant. We left the cathedral, and when we were in the street Father Viñayo’s helper turned off the spotlights and the great pile of glass and flying stone resumed its posture in the night. If one had to have Gothic, I thought, this isn’t too bad, and I turned to thank Father Viñayo for having shown me the windows.

  ‘Ah, but you haven’t seen them yet!’ he said.

  ‘The surprise is about to begin,’ Don Luis assured me, and I wondered what he meant.

  Then, as we stood there toward three in the morning, with the soaring cathedral above us in the darkness, and the helper inside threw another set of switches, and this time it was from within the cathedral that a battery of powerful lights flashed on, so that from the street we saw what men had never seen before, until a few years ago: a vast cathedral composed mostly of glass illuminated from within, so that all the stones that supported the cathedral were invisible and only the windows could be seen, each one an incandescent jewel of the most intense color and variation.

  The Spanish have a saying that sums up their attitude toward religion: ‘To appreciate the cathedral you must at least go inside.’ Now this was reversed, for to appreciate León one must stand off in the darkness and see with fresh eye the miracle as an ordinary building springs suddenly to life, and with such brilliance that no previous experience with light and glass and stone could possibly compare. We stood in the street, awe-struck by the beauty of the walls above us. We walked three times around the huge edifice, or as far as the streets would permit, and finally we agreed that it was at the apse, with its incredible windows, tier upon tier shining like suns, and its forest of flying buttresses—which explain how the curved space with so little stone remains upright—that León’s cathedral looked its best. It is a rare sight, and if I were in Madrid and someone proposed, ‘Let’s drive up to León to see the cathedral lit from within,’ I would not hesitate to make the journey, for to see this thing is to see something so different as to illuminate a lifetime of travel.

  I have seen most of the fine sights of the world and know how exciting Angkor Wat can be at midnight with tiers of Cambodian dancers, or the Acropolis at dusk, or Borobudur in a jungle storm, but so far as sheer visual pleasure is concerned, I have seen nothing to excel León’s cathedral at three in the morning, lighted from within, and I say this as a man who likes neither stained-glass windows nor Gothic.

  On my earliest trip to León, I had had the pleasure of meeting an inventive architect, Alfredo de Ramón-Laca, who had been given the job of renovating a crumbling Renaissance hostel at the edge of town and converting it into a modern hotel to be called the Hostel de San Marcos. ‘It’ll be the finest in Europe,’ he promised me, and we spent a day climbing over the ruins as he explained each step. ‘We’re putting steel ribs right through the heart of the old building, and when we’re through, all the original beauty will remain, but in addition we’ll have three hundred bright new rooms.’ He was especially pleased that a functioning church, which formed the left wing of the building, would be retained. ‘It will be this church which gives the place character.’ ‘I don’t think anybody can make much of this,’ I said. ‘Come back in eight months and see,’ he said.

  This year I was able to stay in the hotel that Señor Ramón-Laca had built, and his earlier enthusiasm proved justified, for he had done what he promised: taken a classic building dating back to the early 1500s and preserved its magnificent façade, converting the whole into what is probably the finest hotel in Europe. At least it’s one of the most reasonably priced.

  I asked the manager to show me his prize suite, and he said, ‘We have one reserved for heads of states.’ I told him I wanted to see one reserved for the heads of a Buick agency in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so he showed me the Condestable Suite on the third floor, overlooking both a plaza outside and a patio inside. It consisted of two bedrooms, sleeping four people, with seventeenth-century brocaded baldacchinos over the beds, a large living room, all kinds of foyers and two baths. Each piece of furniture, especially the heavy antique tables and cowhide chairs, was a work of art. The east wall of the suite consisted of the original stone wall of the fifteenth century, gray-bei
ge in color and magnificent in appearance, and all colors used in the rooms harmonized with this wall. The spacious corridors connecting the rooms were once cloisters, and a special feature which attracted me was that the suite connected directly with the choir of Señor Ramón-Laca’s church, so that one had what amounted to a magnificent fifteenth-century carved hall as a private chapel, with services taking place some sixty feet below at the main altar. Private to this suite was a spiral stone tower leading to a dungeon, plus a high-fidelity system for playing either popular or classical music twenty-four hours a day, should one desire. The cost of what must be one of the choice suites in Europe was ten dollars a day per person, or somewhat less than the cost of a Spanish-type motel in Tulsa. And to remind one that pilgrims actually used these quarters, along one wall was scratched:

  STANISLA° OZEN

  KOWSKI. 1,585

  The financing of such a hotel is interesting. A National Institute of Industry was established some years ago, using partly governmental funds, partly private. It has three main responsibilities: to provide tourist facilities, and this function is financed one hundred percent by the government; to produce the Seat motorcar on franchise from the Fiat people of Italy, and this is only fifty-one percent government financed; and to build autobuses, which are so important to Spain, and this is financed twenty-five percent by Leylands of England, ten percent privately and sixty-five percent by the government. So far the ventures of the institute have prospered.

  One of the pleasures of traveling as I do is that when it is known that I am interested in any esoteric aspect of society, people introduce me to the cronistas and other experts, and now, at lunch in León, I found myself sitting opposite a man who could well serve as an epitome of the scholar in Latin lands, where men of learning find it difficult to make a living when young but find themselves honored sages when old. In America it is the other way around.

  The cronista, Don Angel Suárez Ema, was in his late sixties, a big man with a fine expressive face that lit up when he talked, which was most of the time. His sole topic, at least on this day, was the glory of León, for he was also the poet laureate of the city and its cronista. When he spoke he had the capacity to project himself into whatever past age he was dealing with, so that in turn he was a Roman commanding a legion, an impoverished king trying to bind up the remnants of the kingdom, or a princess unjustly treated. To listen to Don Angel for some hours was an exhilarating experience, something like a whiz-bang ride on a historical loop-the-loop. Spain is filled with such cronistas, learned old men who have studied all their lives and who love to share what they have learned.

  I already knew a good deal of what Don Angel told me, but one of his stories was new and reflected the spirit that animated the pilgrims’ road. The narrative began with an innocuous question, thrown off by Don Angel in confidence that I would answer it affirmatively. ‘Of course you’ve stopped at Río Orbigo to pay homage to Suero de Quiñones?’

  For some unfortunate reason I thought that Quiñones were something to eat and replied that I hadn’t tasted them yet, whereupon Don Angel slapped the table with his big right hand, stared at me in disbelief and cried, ‘My God, man! You don’t know Quiñones?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The knight-errant sans reproche, except that he was crazy?’

  ‘I haven’t heard of him.’

  ‘And yet you make a pilgrimage along his road!’

  I asked the cronista to tell me of Suero, the knight-ideal who was a little cracked, and he looked at me with a sort of scholarly love, thanking me for an opportunity to speak about a character who obviously attracted him. ‘You understand that in the old days many evil men, especially from Germany and France, infested this road, so that bands of knights were required to patrol it, protecting the innocent. It was for this reason that the Order of Santiago was established, composed of Spaniards. But fine knights from foreign countries formed their own order to protect pilgrims, too, so that along the way there grew up a congenial fraternity. It had, however, one weakness. A garrulous knight, say at Estella, could sit in the tavern, knowing that any competition might be miles away in León, and shout, “I am the strongest and bravest knight on the Way of St. James,” and get away with it, while another knight here in León could bellow, “I am well known as the strongest and bravest knight on the Way.” In the early 1400s this kind of thing had become common, so one day Suero de Quiñones from a village not far from here decided single-handedly to put an end to the nonsense. He announced, with the king’s approval, that he was going to stand for thirty days at a bridge over the Río Orbigo and fight every knight who approached from either direction, which could mean thirty or forty fights a day, until it was made clear who was the champion of the Way of St. James. This was in the year 1434.

  ‘Now, I’m not claiming that Suero de Quiñones was a normal man of the period. For some years he had spent each Thursday wearing about his neck an iron collar which must have caused him much discomfort but which he offered as proof that he would undergo any hardship to prove his love for a lady who did not return it. In fact, the nature of the challenge which he threw down at the bridge was that no knight could pass until he acknowledged that Suero’s lady was more beautiful than the knight’s lady. He expounded other ideas that were equally heroic.

  ‘As I said, he made the challenge alone, but after he had done so he was joined by nine fellow Spaniards who wished to test the foreigners, and for thirty days these men stood at the bridge and fought all comers. Some chroniclers say that seven hundred jousts were held, which seems a large number, but we do know that Claramont of Aragón died in his fight with Quiñones, but not because our knight was vengeful. Claramont’s horse shied and his own lance snapped and passed through his eye. Where to bury the dead knight? The Dominicans of León wouldn’t accept the body, because it had been slain in a jousting unapproved by the Church. And the Bishop of Astorga refused burial for the same reason. So Quiñones himself bought a piece of land next to a chapel burial ground, and we believe that when no one was looking he may have slipped the body underground into the holy burial place.

  ‘At any rate, it was a splendid thirty days, with music and dancing and banquets every night after the fighting was over. Quiñones seemed to have won every joust he entered, and it was some years along this road before any loud-mouthed knight dared to announce that he was the most powerful, for all knew Quiñones was.’

  Next day, after we had paid our respects to the ancient Roman bridge at which Quiñones had defied Europe, we came to a hill from which we could see the modest but very old city of Astorga, and if Don Luis had at that moment told me that down there I was to have the best meal I was to encounter in Spain, I would have derided the suggestion, because Astorga did not look like a place that would have good restaurants. Nor did it. Don Luis said, ‘There is, however, this little place owned by a woman whose husband helps her, and it will have something acceptable.’ He led us to the Restaurante La Peseta in one of Astorga’s little streets, and as I entered and saw one small room and a crowded old-fashioned kitchen, I had only modest expectations. But before we sat down to eat we happened to look into the kitchen and there we found some six or seven elderly women tending a collection of pots which bubbled in a very businesslike way.

  ‘You looking for some real Spanish food?’ one of the old women asked me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said tentatively, and she took me to her part of the kitchen where she worked at a table positively cluttered with slabs of raw meat, herbs, vegetables and shellfish.

  ‘What would you like?’ she asked. It was a hot day and I doubted that I wanted heavy food, but she whispered in confidence, ‘Take the lomo de cerdo adobado.’ I signified my ignorance and she pointed to a long square chunk of dark meat and to myself I translated the name she repeated: ‘Loin of pork adobado.’ But what was adobado?

  ‘Is it good?’ I asked, for it certainly did not look so, and loin of pork was scarcely something that I would normally order from a m
enu, especially in midsummer.

  Father Jesús Precedo Lafuente.

  ‘When I finish cooking it,’ she began, abruptly stopping and sort of shouting at me, ‘Garbanzos, too.’

  ‘Garbanzos?’ These are the heavy, tasteless chickpeas which spoil so much Spanish cooking. Garbanzos I did not want, but she took me firmly by the arm and led me to the pot for which she seemed to be specially responsible.

  ‘You have never tasted garbanzos,’ she said sternly. ‘Now sit down and order some Rioja wine.’

  Don Luis asked what I had ordered, and when I said, ‘Lomo de cerdo adobado’ his face brightened, and while we waited, tasting the Rioja, he said, ‘In the old days when I was a boy, many families butchered one or two hogs, and when the loins were cut out, long slabs of meat squared on the sides, they were marinated five or six months in a mixture of parsley, garlic, onion, oregano, salt, pepper, oil and vinegar. Then they were smoked until they became one of the best-tasting meats on earth. Michener, you’ve stumbled into a gastronomical gold mine.’

  ‘But it’s being served with garbanzos,’ I said, and his face fell. ‘With garbanzos you can’t do much,’ he said.

  Finally the dishes arrived. The regular waiter brought the ordinary ones for Don Luis and the rest of the party, but the old woman brought mine, a huge country plate with five slices of pork neatly arranged on one side, plus a heap of garbanzos on the other. As I took my fork, the woman grabbed my wrist and whispered benevolently, ‘What you’re about to do you won’t forget.’

  It was not hyperbole. The meat was something unique into which all of rural life had somehow been compressed, for it was both savory and smoky; it was firm to the knife but succulent to the tooth; it had no trace of fat, but the forests of northern Spain seemed to have crept into it, and I have never tasted a better smoked meat. It was, however, the garbanzos that astonished me, and the others too, for when I said how good they were, everyone nibbled from my plate and we called the old cook to bring us additional dishes. She put them on the table and smiled approvingly as we dug in. Softly she said, ‘My garbanzos are soaked for two days in cold salt water. They are cooked slowly, and when they are sure of themselves I throw in some salty ham, three different kinds of hot sausages, some potatoes and cabbage, and they stew for eight hours. If you’re a workman with little money, you eat garbanzos as your only dish, with meat and vegetables thrown in. If you’re wealthy like a norteamericano, you can afford the garbanzos plain. Because I charge you as much as if you’d taken the meat too.’