The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

of their possessions, for the country was desolate. Further on we saw the ruins of the castle of Tudela perched on a height above the road. In the Middle Ages the lords of that castle exacted toll dues from the helpless pilgrims, who had just run the gauntlet of the bandits at Olloniego. The pilgrim road after this passes on the left bank of the River Nalón and ascends to Santiago de la Manjoya at the top of a hill, which is less than two kilometres from Oviedo. The name Manjoya is supposed to be derived from the mediaeval French war-cry, Monjoie, which was uttered by the Jacobean pilgrims when at last they saw from the hill of San Marcos the steeples of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, and consequently this hill from which we can see the slender spire of San Salvador is called by the same as the hill outside Santiago. 42
    The, arrival of caravans of pilgrims must have been red-letter days in the monotonous lives of the inhabitants of the ancient city of Oviedo, which in the thirteenth century had not more than a population of nine hundred. The pilgrimage to the Cámara Santa was the only event in the year that linked Oviedo with the outer world and gave its cathedral prestige and the fame of being called Sancta Ovetensis. 43
    Today Oviedo is an attractive city with new buildings and pleasant gardens and parks, which give it an air of prosperity and comfort. I remember, however, the gloomy day in December, 1937, when I arrived there in a car driven by a Press officer of the Spanish Army. From Pola de Gordon on to Oviedo there was hardly a town or village that was not a shambles of gutted houses; bridge after bridge had been blown up and even in the country the isolated farm houses were gaping ruins. Mining towns like Villamanín, Busdongo, Pola de Lena and Mieres with their sullen, war-stricken populations camping amidst their ruins prepared us for the macabre panorama of destruction that awaited us at Oviedo. After passing seven lines of trenches, we entered a city of the dead. So appalling was the ravage by fire, bombs and artillery that, according to information, only fourteen buildings out of this city of sixty thousand inhabitants were undamaged. We passed street after street of ruins and it seemed to me incredible that human beings had been able to live through such a siege with no windows in their houses, no electricity, no water. Yet within a stone’s throw of the mutilated cathedral of El Salvador, I discovered the Paredes Restaurant, which miraculously kept open day and night during all that siege. The owner used in the morning to join his companions in the trenches defending the city and return to serve his customers their lunch and dinner, and he showed me with pride the menus he gave them daily during the months when the besieged city was under continual bombardment. At the end of the siege there were only thirteen thousand inhabitants in the city, but among them were children who used to play in the streets; their ears so highly trained by the siege that they knew by the sound whether the shell was a seven and a half, a ten and a half or a fifteen and a half and took cover accordingly.
    In Oviedo today there are few external traces of the sinister autumn rising of 1934, the prelude to the Civil War, and the siege of 1936-7. Its modern cosmopolitan air contrasts with the old-fashioned Oviedo I used to visit in 1924-8, and which is immortalized in the pages of the celebrated Asturian novelist, Ramón Pérez de Ayala.
    As I am forever fascinated by tradition, I went off in search of the ancient chigres or cider taverns, El Tuto and El Piñero. In the first I met a picaresque old vagabond called Pedrin, whom I had known before the Civil War when I had roamed through the villages between Oviedo and Gijón and Oviedo and Grado. Pedrin, who is an expert cider-taster, no sooner saw me enter than he gave a whoop, raised his bottle above his head and poured the liquid from behind bis ear with unerring aim so that it foamed into the slanted glass he held in his other hand.
    “A toast, a toast,” he cried, “in well-beaten cider; that will bring you luck, my friend. Where have you been all this time?”
    “I am on a pilgrimage, Pedrin, and I’ve no time to go gallivanting with you.” I drank off the cider and threw the last drops on the damp floor according to the ritual of all chigres.
    The old vagabond puckered up his wrinkled face and winked roguishly, saying: “So we’ve reformed at last and