The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

fortress fell in ruins, and so did most of the impregnable walls from which the arrogant Alvar Pérez Ossorio, Marquis of Astorga, shouted his device:

    “Do mis armas se posieron
    Movellas jamás podieron.”

    But, though the former greatness of the city has crumbled into dust, nobody today can approach the majestic city perched on its hill and wander the narrow streets without feeling the mysterious presence of the primitive inhabitants, whose name Arnacos or ‘excellent warriors’ has descended to us with their emblem, the branch of the oak tree which adorned their shield.
    As I walked along the street I heard my name called from a neighbouring bar: it was a lawyer friend of mine from Astorga named Julio Francisco Ogando. He became my guide and at once initiated me into the life of Astorga. We went first to the narrow Street of Santiago by which the pilgrims went to the cathedral to pay their respects to St. James, whose statue clad as a pilgrim is on the battlements. The pilgrims entered the city through the barrio de San Andrés and stopped at the convent of St. Francis where there was a hospital. The cathedral was built in 1471 on the site of an older building but has been restored at different periods. The exterior is mostly in the style of Churriguera. Inside, the most striking work of art is the huge altar-piece by Gaspar Becerra known as the Spanish Michael Angelo.
    Next to the cathedral is the ancient Hospital of St. John which was mentioned in documents of 1187. It was burnt down in the eighteenth century but reconstructed in 1764. There is a tradition that St. Francis fell ill at Astorga and was a patient in that hospital. The Bishop’s palace of cold grey granite, which stands in striking contrast to the yellow-toned stone of the cathedral and the hospital, fascinates by its eccentricity: designed by the modern Catalan architect Gaudí, it is a kind of pastiche rhapsody all’antico. Below the pleasant garden, which is attractively laid out along the summit of the city walls, stretches the vast panorama of the Maragateria.
    According to my informants the Maragatos inhabit a number of pueblos within a radius of three hundred and fifty square kilometres and live exclusively among their own tribe. My friends in Astorga scouted the theory given to me by the old man of the Puente de Órbigo that they were descended from the mythical King Mauregato. Nor did they believe that they had sprung from Mozarabic settlers who had penetrated at an early date into the southern León. Others, on the other hand, were of the opinion that the Maragatos came of Berber stock. After wandering through the streets of Astorga and watching the men in the taverns in the evening and the women in the market place in the early morning I came to the conclusion that George Borrow’s description of the Maragatos in The Bible in Spain, written in 1843, contains more probability of truth than many of the conflicting theories given to me by the natives of Astorga. He was convinced that the Maragatos were a remnant of those Goths, who sided with the Moors in their invasion of Spain and adopted their religion, customs and manner of dress, which until recently the people wore every day in the villages. They wore leather tight-fitting jerkins, a broad leather belt in which they kept their pouch, zaragüelles or wide billowing bloomers, like those worn by the Valencian peasants, brown cloth gaiters or polainas, and a big slouching hat. *
    Borrow was certain that their blood had at no time mingled with that of the wild children of the desert, for scarcely amongst the hills of Norway, he says, would you find figures and faces more essentially Gothic than those of the Maragatos. They are strong athletic men but loutish and heavy, and their features, though for the most part well-formed, are vacant and devoid of expression.... They have, he adds, a coarse, thick pronunciation, and when you hear them speak, you almost imagine that some German or English peasant is attempting to express himself in the language of the Peninsula. *
    The true explanation I am sure is that given by Julio Caro Baroja, the most eminent of modern Spanish ethnologists, who says that the Maragatos are the descendants of an ancient Asturian tribe possessing marked conservative tendencies and resembling in certain ways the Pasiegos of the Santander province and the Vaqueiros of Asturias. Up to comparatively recent days the primitive custom of the covada or ‘cou-vade’