The peculiar spell of Allariz

'Collect from now the roses of life ...' (1)

'And the ship is going, captain my captain'. In it, the pilgrim who accesses the magic of the 'terra galega' through the Camino Mozárabe or Vía de la Plata, reaches Allariz, knowing that it is only a score of kilometers from the capital of Ourense and that magnificent Porch of the Paradise of his cathedral, which will be an inestimable anticipation of that other one, the one of Glory, that even with the scourge of scaffolding awaits him to show him the incomparable delights of Master Mateo, last threshold towards the heart of 'la Inventio' in the miraculous site of the 'Campus Estellae'.

Perhaps on his way, he has realized that despite being Orense the only province of Galicia that has no natural border with the sea, the soul of the aurienses is like a conch that collects a thousand and one marine sounds.
It senses it situated on a bridge that courts with respect the passage of a river of pristine waters, which transform the rays of the sun into silvery scales of mermaid, carrying in its name a genuine biblical memory: the Arnoia.

He will again feel it a few meters ahead, next to the Town Hall, in that fountain located in front of the church of Santiago, where the stonemasons, using the spell of his hammer and his chisel, trapped two water nymphs in the soul of the stone. , that poets like Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, turned into moonbeams.

And it is that in Galicia the landscape, like the stone - leaving for better occasion, the mediatic importance of its superior megalithic - has a very old and very particular soul, as shown by the details of its innumerable shields and the tendentious intentionality hidden in its temples oldest and emblematic.

Here in Allariz, and unequally, which a homage sine qua num to life itself and its deadly rules of evolution, highlight, at least, precisely this temple of Santiago, with its two covers-one open in the south and the other oriented towards the west, looking towards the Way of the Stars-, its multiple epigraphic enigmas -which probably denote different artistic periods-, its fabulous Romanesque Christ -collected on the stony sky of the altar- and the sweet presence, full of gratia, of its baroque Pilgrim MTA.

That other, dedicated to the figure of Santo Estevo -a saint, like San Bieito, (who also has his church above, in the square), quite popular on this side of the Ribeira Sacra, as in the Lugo part is San Martiño- and even beyond, the surviving cover of what was a memorable temple of San Pedro; a cover that, by the characteristics of its capitals, as well as by the name of the street where it is located -Horta, that is to say, Huerta- perhaps reminds the pilgrim that another one that was on its way through Zamora, located not too far of the Santiago de los Caballeros temple -where the El Cid Campeador was knighted- and in whose tower the general archive of the hospital gentlemen in that city was guarded, until not many years ago: Santa María de la Horta.

A city, with a peculiar charm, which shows in the white lime of the facades of their houses, that marine nostalgia that was commented above, more typical of the villages hanging like stars of the coast, that still remembers, with a tribute, in the figure of the 'boi' or ox, the primordial inheritance of the Celtic herding, without forgetting that supernatural world that revolves around its cruceiros, magical scare-souls at the time, and the old myths in the names of its streets, like the one that leads by name Lobariñas and reminds us of the only case of lycanthropy of which there is an extensive historical archive available to the researcher: that of Romasanta.

Because, although it was not in the city itself that such bloodthirsty events took place under the influence of the full moon, it is enough just to take a small tour of the surroundings, to realize the strange spell that is still hidden in the depths of its impenetrable forests.

Take for example, that spectacular forest that many pilgrims cross on their way to the nearby Santa Mariña de Augas Santas and the so-called Forno da Santa.

And, as Allariz shows very well, Galicia dreams of being modern, never forgetting its ancient roots.
A PUNCTUALIZATION: sometimes, the memory slips. When talking about the Baroque image of the Pilgrim MTA, I wanted to refer to the baroque image of Santiago. The Pilgrim Virgin, is located not far from Allariz: in the Collegiate Church of Santa María, in the town of Xunqueira de Ambía.

Notes:

(1) N.H. Kleinbaum: 'The Club of the Dead Poets', editorial license for Círculo de Lectores courtesy of The Walt Disney Company Spain, S.A., 1991, page 73.