What a pleasure, that one of getting lost in those old, eternal Castilian cities with a bittersweet taste of past and tradition, even though in the environment one can smell the peculiar smell of wet gunpowder that always precedes the sudden roar of the storm.

August, irascible and unpredictable, like that old general, Fernán González, to whom History, despite its pathetic arbitrariness, has wanted it to be better known as the Good Fueros, sometimes renounces itself and goes to the clouds with the tongue outside, similar to a lapdog who asks humiliated an urgent shower and a drink of water that contain their anger and quench their thirst.

The rain falls, with force, and during the passage of the black cloud, the world seems to claim with relief a new story of Noah. And even so, after the Flood and the flight of crows and pigeons, the water leaves silver slopes sliding down the worn cobblestones, while a layer of fresh varnish falls on the typical houses of the old village, highlighting the color of the burnished skeletons of wood, making up the cadaverous pallor of adobe and lime.

Faced with the lost sight of Golem in the absence of the magical syllable that breathes life, the statue of Queen Christina of Norway guards, with bronze determination, the venerable Collegiate Church of Santa Maria, knowing that in its cloister, a stone sepulcher -which Pandora's Box- imprisons some bare bones, centuries ago gnawed by the necrophile and merciless Saturn, but whose calcium still releases phosphorescent humours, which resemble souls in pain in contact with the warm embrace of the night.

There is an oculus, whose eyelid recalls a perfected Solomon star, which guides the expectation of the visitor to enter cautiously inside such a graceful Gothic cyclops, to admire treasures that accumulate, lying and muted, centuries of star history.

Sumptuous and gentrified, rich in symbols and details, in the privacy of the Collegiate the chiaroscuros seem wormholes that gnaw the mulberry of the enigmas and hide, in fine silk, the pudendas zones of a History, whose name and surnames are still discover.

There are polisquélicas forms, and also some troubled virgins of Mamblas and Redonda and the forest of columns rising towards the infinite, architectural imitation of the ancestral sacred forests, where even the wisdom of San Bernardo himself found resources to develop his spiritual doctorate.

Mysterious also in its solitude, the tower of the old Castilian count -which also bears his name- seems to direct its grayish walls towards Silos, and even beyond, towards the defile of the Yecla, as if expecting an agarena invasion capable of trocar the immemorial amnesia of the desperate ghosts that one day were his garrison, the new are the bugles that prelude the din of battle.

Castilla, Castilla, indefatigable battler ...

The Mass has begun in the neighboring church of Santo Tomás for some time now. During the interval, the artificial lights rival the shadows that have taken over the part of the choir. There is a dome like a sky, in whose wavy forms it is difficult to resist the temptation to settle for stars in the absence of labyrinths.

And a beautiful altarpiece where Juan, who is not Christ, bears the symbol of the Lamb and the Grail held by Magdalena, the S of the Crismón comes alive, and becomes a Serpent. Keys to the pilgrim of the millennium.

Like the one that, back there, where darkness remembers the alchemical still of the earth, two sarcophagi reproduce, from the abyss of anonymity, a beautiful monoxi cross and another unbroken cross that, like Tree of Life, or Destiny, was probably born of the skull of Adam.

There is a bird of good omen, a genuine malvís, that asks for the witches of the luck of Covarrubias. It is difficult to say if your question was asked in the right place, but because of the answer you received, it is useless to ask about the witches of the fate of Covarrubias: in Covarrubias there are witches as in any other place. Maybe that's why I did not risk the Christmas tenths.

After the pleasant meal, a last goodbye to the Virgen de la Cereza, prisoner in her latticed cubicle, as a sentinel guarding the bridge to demand the toll to the tourist who comes and goes; guide that receives and also dismisses in Covarrubias.

NOTICE: Originally posted on my blog MEMORIES OF A PILGRIM. Both the text and the photographs that accompany it 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/2012/11/covarrubias.html