A short distance from Trébago, the adventure continues in Magaña, a town of some importance, where its castle, its church dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours—the one who, according to the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, shared his military tunic with a poor man and withdrew to the solitude of a hermitage after the trial and death sentence by beheading of the supposed heretic Priscillian, who was also Bishop of Ávila—and a bridge, which, medieval or not, nevertheless follows the pattern of those bridges located on the Camino de Santiago, known as "donkey's back" bridges, which symbolically represented a connection between heaven and earth, are particularly striking.
Unlike the Islamic watchtower of Trébago, Magaña's castle is a 15th-century manor house that belonged, among other illustrious residents, to the ill-fated Juan de Luna. It stands atop a high promontory, overlooking not only the town but also the melancholy flow of the Alhama River. In its time, it controlled one of the main routes of the Mesta, whose powerful lords, as we have mentioned before, came to dominate the Highlands and left a mark of their power in the numerous mansions, some of which, though barely standing, still remain in many of the main towns of the area.
Although heavily modified, the church of Magaña also contains some funerary stelae reused as fill masonry. However, in this case, those bearing a cross pattée are suspiciously abundant, a detail that might suggest—regardless of the fact that this type of cross was also common in the consecration of some churches—the possible presence of knights, the Templars, whose traces we will undoubtedly encounter again later.
Furthermore, in the area around Magaña, the intrepid traveler also has the opportunity to rediscover other fascinating enigmas, such as the mysterious 20th-century Romanesque church in Cerbón, the only one of its kind in Soria, which has two apses and other curiosities that we will explore on subsequent occasions.
And also, for fans of that fascinating universe presented some years ago by Steven Spielberg, Fuentes de Magaña offers the opportunity to encounter titanic elements of that Jurassic Park, which introduces us to the most unsettling and distant mysteries of evolution.
NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property and are therefore subject to my copyright.
