The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

men’s tombstones. *
    The horse of Santiago above the portal of his church at Logroño made me think of the stalwart horse of Gonzalo de Silvestre, whom Hernando de Soto, the Conqueror of Florida, considered the best in his army, for he could carry sixteen stone and kept straight on the trail as if he had an invisible Pole Star to direct him. The mediaeval knight, when wearing his full weight of armour, needed such a passive stallion to carry himself and his shield, and for that reason, when not engaged in combat, he rode his palfrey and let his squire lead the warhorse carrying the heavy armour. Hence the monstrous size of Santiago’s horse, which recalls the steed of the Condottiere Colleoni. I thought I noticed a glint in his eyes and I remembered the ancient proverb: Uno piensa el bayo, y otro el que le ensilla (the horse thinks one thing, and he who saddles him another). He, I am sure, does not see eye to eye with his master. He frets and fumes on his pedestal, for he is thinking of his brother roans, greys, blacks, chestnuts, piebalds, tordillos, moros and ruanos who are careering through Spain and galloping the Americas to the cry of Santiago y cierra España. Motionless on his pediment in rampant boredom, he dreams enviously of the mettlesome horse (muy rixoso, Bernal Diaz calls him) of Ortiz, the magician, which when it was in heat struck terror in the Indians by its neighing and its grey eyes; of Motilla, likewise, the incomparable bay with the white star on its forehead, greatest horse of the conquest and prized by the Emperor Charles V; and highest of all, Morzillo himself, the black horse of Cortés, which became under the name Tziunchan, the god of thunder and lightning, the equine Boanerges of the Indians. He may, however, in his loneliness today console himself with the thought that he alone of all the horses perpetuated in stone along the Road of St. James, is a charger worthy of Santiago Matamoros.

    My next halting-place was Nájera, which I reached after a very uncomfortable journey in an overcrowded bus. I secured a seat by offering to hold two small children on my knees—an offer which was accepted with alacrity by a harassed mother who was trying to rock a screaming baby to sleep. In the bus I met an old friend from Logroño called Ochagavia, whom I had known in past years when I used to lecture on folklore subjects for the Cultural Society of Logroño. Ochagavia is a characteristic Riojano, practical, progressive and full of pride in his native city. He believes in the colonizing talents of his countrymen, who he says know instinctively how to make the earth yield its products, because they grew up in the vineyards of Spain.
    “Wherever you go in the world—to western America, China, or Australia, you will always find in some corner or other a Riojano, who is busily engaged in planting vines or in making a desert into garden. We know fertile earth by the feel or the smell of it.”
    My friend was one of the leading spirits of a club in Logroño called La Becada (the Woodcock) which held its seances and dinners in a vaulted cellar of the eighteenth century. The members did their own cooking in the Basque co-operative style and prepared the Rioja national dish, lamb with artichokes, which forms an admirable foundation for the generous vintages of the locality and the ensuing poetic improvising contests. Ochagavia and his friends, too, belonged to an old charitable organization called Cocina Económica, which was founded in 1840 by a colonel of artillery, called Santa Barbara, to give meals to the poor at a minute nominal cost and a place to sleep for a night. The three tariffs charged for the three meals in the day were: sixty céntimos, eighty céntimos and one peseta, and the bed cost five pesetas. The leading spirit in that organization was a young priest, who had given away all his wealth to the poor and lived in the hostel, devoting all his life to the waifs and strays that arrived daily at this haven of rest, which reminded me of the ancient Jacobean hospices. Moreover, Ochagavia and his friends, whenever they met together, or whenever strangers came to the city, would make them give small subscriptions to the Cocina Económica. Before I knew my friend Ochagavia, I had visited Logroño accompanied by Gypsies, whom I had met on the road from Estella, and I always wondered why the Romanichals were unanimous in their praise of Logroño as the most charitable and hospitable city in all