The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

away from Pepin Claviños and his picaresque friend Pachin Parredo, for they wanted to carry me off to Somiedo. In the end it was the parish priest who delivered me. With him I visited the church of San Martín de Luiña and he pointed out to me the inscription on the granite pavement penalizing the Vaqueiros, saying: “Things have changed since the old days. Today it is the Vaqueiros who think themselves the lords of creation. Has Pachin Parredo not sung to you the characteristic song of the Vaqueiros ?

    Los Vaqueiros son Vaqueiros
    eyos mismos lo xuraron
    y vale más un Vaqueiro
    que veinticinco aldeanos.

    (Cowboys are cowboys
    they themselves have sworn it,
    and one cowboy is more than a match
    for twenty-five villagers.)

THE HIDDEN TOWN

    The panorama of sierra and the estuary of the Nalon from the village of Somao through which I passed on the way to Cudillero is one of the finest I had seen on my pilgrimage and this region deserves the name of ‘balcony of the Asturias’ which is given to it by the local inhabitants.
    Arrival at Cudillero conies as a surprise, for the town is built in so deep a hollow that it cannot be seen either from the sea or from the land. I stood on the edge of the cliff overlooking the town which is built in a vast natural amphitheatre with the houses rising tier upon tier in serried rows. I could also look down upon the wide stretch of countryside glowing in the setting sun and upon the sea which flashed like burnished copper. Deep below me in the abyss, however, dusk had already fallen and the lights in the houses began to sparkle here and there in the amphitheatre like restless fire-flies. A road curled round and round the face of the cliffs as it ascended from the town to the cemetery perched on the headland to my left, but there were countless steep bridle paths criss-crossing the face of the cliffs and terminating in steps descending to the lower town lying in a kind of well.
    In the Middle Ages its invisibility from the sea made it a refuge from the Norman pirates who swept the northern coasts of Spain. There must, however, be a Norman strain in the population, for one often sees in the streets red-headed fishergirls who look like Vikings’ daughters. It was the hand of nature that carved the hidden town, for Cudillero, as the name shows, was the result of the capricious twisting of the River Cudillero which today elbows its way under the town into the sea. As I gazed at the sparkling sea over which the shades of evening were gradually descending, I saw the fleet of fishing boats returning to port—some already clustering around the jetty, which was black with fishermen and fisherwomen unloading. In the dusk the myriads of lights quivering through the mist in the vast amphitheatre and the distant hum of countless voices rising and falling like a tide, reminded me of the bees of St. John of the Nettles and the swarm of singing souls with golden wings circling about the Mystical Rose.
    Cudillero, ‘the Hidden Town’, used to be one of my favourite places of refuge in Spain, and at the back of the little house where I used to stay runs the earlier pilgrim road to Compostella along which, according to local tradition, travelled Charlemagne and later the pilgrims who had come to Oviedo to worship the relics in the Cámara Santa before continuing their journey to Compostella. Most of my knowledge of this region I derived from my Asturian friend, Don Juan Antonio Bravo, and his sisters who inhabit the princely house of Villademar surrounded by woods and gardens on a hill above Cudillero. Here in his town of Cudillero he is regarded with great affection because he has devoted himself always to improving the lot of the fishing population.
    When I arrived I found a gay party in progress, and among the many guests was Don Pío Ahujar, the doctor of Cudillero. Though seventy-six years of age, his tall, commanding figure and Ins bushy white moustaches give him the air of an old French guards officer en retraite. He had a brother a priest and two sisters nuns, but he never puts foot in a church. I asked one of the guests why this was so. “Because,” he answered, “Don Pío went suddenly bald and had to wear a cap even in the house because of draughts and he refused to go to church because he was ashamed to let people see he was bald. But he hears Mass by radio. For over fifty years he has dominated the people of Cudillero like a benevolent tyrant.”
    “He does not charge any