Pilgrim's Road

apartment at the foot of the old solid walls of León. Paco had the habit of carrying off people. When he was a penniless young man seeing the world, he had done a short stint as a waiter in a Swiss hotel. At one of the tables he had met his future wife, Christina, a young Swiss girl on holiday with her parents. Whirlwind romance though it was, it seemed to have worked. Apart from the language, and an occasional moan about Spanish housing and education, Christina said she had never regretted her choice. Giving her the opportunity to speak French again with another woman was one of the reasons Paco had advanced for inviting me to stay. The other was that he was using the refugio for his tools. Paco was in charge of a work opportunity scheme for young people which tackled some of the necessary restoration on the fabric of the old city, and currently he was in the middle of a large-scale project on the monastery of San Isidoro. I could not have found a more knowledgeable guide to León’s historic buildings, nor a more warmly welcoming family. My much-needed rest day extended to a three nights’ stay, and even then I had trouble getting away, as Christina and Paco tried to tempt me with offers of trips to the seaside and with fresh aspects of their city that I had not yet seen.
    I would have been happy in León wherever I had stayed, and Aimery Picaud’s assessment of it was one I wholeheartedly endorsed. Although no longer ‘the residence of the king and the court’, it was certainly still ‘full of all delights’. The variety that was packed within the compass of its splendid walls never ceased to amaze me. The narrow little alleyways meandering up and down, through arches and around corners until I lost all sense of direction would debouch suddenly into open spaces. There appeared to be no end to these squares which were of every shape and size. Some contained nothing but their own sense of spaciousness, always surprising after the tunnel-like approach. Others were lined with an assortment of pleasant old buildings. Tall period houses, some extremely fine, and many hung with wooden balconies leaning companionably against one another, their roofs all at different levels. Shops, restaurants and bars — particularly bars — were squeezed in between them in great profusion. Indeed bars were such a speciality of León that I could well believe the claim that you could visit a different one daily for a year and still not have seen them all. Weekly markets also added their bustle to many of León’s larger squares during the hours of daylight. Altogether, I thought it impossible not to be captivated by the place.
    My serious visits fitted naturally into this pleasant wandering. Fine churches and buildings of architectural interest, like the Gaudí house, are scattered throughout the old walled city, clustered like the lesser jewels in a crown around the great diadems of the cathedral and the basilica of San Isidoro. León’s third great gem, San Marcos, the former headquarters of the Knights of Santiago is some way outside the old walls and has been turned into a luxury hotel. The most outstanding feature of this opulent monument, built at the height of the Order’s power and wealth is the Renaissance façade, the longest in Spain — a hundred metres of elegantly pilastered and pedimented white stone, thickly encrusted with carvings, decorations and portrait heads. It is in the Spanish plateresque style which, like the work of silversmiths from which the name is derived, is very fine and intricate, and the general effect is more like a giant tapestry than a work in stone. I spent a pleasant afternoon in San Marcos visiting the museum and the elegant cloisters, but much as I enjoyed it for its own sake, I lost the sense of the Camino there; it was altogether too grand and the period too late. The main attraction of San Marcos for a pilgrim is that it is built beside the old medieval bridge across the River Bernesga where the original and more humble pilgrim’s hostel of San Marcos once stood.
    The great Romanesque basilica of San Isidoro on its prominent mound is the true heart of the city. The name León is a corruption of legion, for the Roman Seventh Legion was stationed here, and the ruins of their temple lie beneath the basilica, as does a succession of Christian churches, one of which was razed by the Moor, Al-Mansur. San Isidoro was built between 1054 and 1066 when the city was being established as the