A walk through Lara de los Infantes

It has always been said, and it remains an objective truth, how wide Castilla is. So wide, in fact, that it has such a variety of singularities and nuances that, in many cases, they leave, in the traveler's mind, the subjective sensation of continually entering and leaving metaphorical parallel universes, which shape landscapes of characteristics as special as they are unforgettable.

So wide, to continue with this idea of the superb greatness that it had in the past, that still, after centuries, Castile continues to be that land, sown with the most notable of myth and legend, that irremediably seduces continue to persevere to extract, to the extent possible, part of its ancestral and immemorial secrets.

Precisely, it is this last thing that I would like to try to show you, in this short walk through that true heart of Castile, which, in fact, can be considered the breeding ground from which it emerged, from the firm and combative hand of the first rebel counts. Castilians, the most florid of medieval exploits, which could well be said to have been the origin of what, over time and in terms of literary genius, Spain would come to know as the Golden Age: the land of Lara.

For centuries, a land that witnessed, with special prominence, that clash of civilizations, which, in essence, could be considered the beginnings of that historical period known as the Reconquista - in fact, Spain is considered the prelude to the Crusades - Lara de los Infantes is today a town that suffers from a melancholic dose of romantic ostracism, nodding off with monotonous drowsiness in the shadow, now practically disappeared, of its formidable past.

A part of this is justified, however, in the neighboring town of Quintanilla de las Viñas and the little that the wind did not blow away, in relation to the Visigoth monastery of Santa María, where what is supposed to be the tosca is still preserved. although the first representation of the Pantocrator that would be a constant, later, in the Romanesque Arch, an architectural style where Burgos is especially prolific, as well as in the jagged remains of the old castle, which dominate the top of a nearby hill and above all, in the terrible modifications of a church, which, judging by the Romanesque remains that it still conserves, had to be a meritorious exponent of the previously mentioned Art of Christianity, par excellence, as many authors, through the times, have described the Romanesque .

Within the brutal architectural clash that shows its most relevant patrimonial element, the church itself, there is still a glimpse of an excellent doorway, oriented to the west, some arcosolios, embedded in the south wall, part of what was once a second doorway, also in this same south and the apse -around which there is a small cemetery- in which some interesting sculptural representations can be seen, which refer us, with all the force of what time and erosion have not managed to destroy, to that way of seeing the world and feeling of some ancestors, whose desires, after all, were not so far from what we can have today.

In short: a journey through the memory of a time, which, if it was not better, could be considered closer and more attached to a life, where myth and tradition were a picturesque existential form, whose essence, unfortunately, is being losing.

NOTICE: Both the text and the photographs that accompany it, as well as the video that illustrates it, are my exclusive intellectual property and, therefore, are subject to my Copyright.

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