The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

Spain. The reason was the Cocina Económica, where for over a century they have eaten their fill, drunk their Rioja wine, slept their night and passed on their way.
    When we reached Nájera I went with Ochagavia to visit the Church of Santa María la Real, which was the burial-place of the seven kings of the tenth century who ruled Nájera as a separate kingdom from Navarre. The first of those kings was Sancho Abarca (905-26), who won back most of the Rioja from the Moors: his son, Don Garcia, who was known as Él de Nájera, for he was born there and, considering the court of Nájera gayer than the court of Pamplona, resolved to build a great basilica which would consecrate the capital of his kingdom.
    The people describe the foundation of the church in the following legend. One day Don Garcia was hunting on the banks of the river Najerilla; a dove crossed his path and the King released his hawk, which pursued the dove, and the two birds disappeared into a cave on the opposite side of the river. The King followed them, and when he entered the cave he was surprised to see a brilliant light coming from a niche at the back. * There in the niche in the rock he saw a statue of Our Lady and at her feet the dove and the hawk rested in perfect amity. In front of the statue was a pot ( terraza ) of lilies and a bell. After such an omen the King resolved to build a church over the cave, and it was consecrated in 1056. The pot of white lilies inspired the King to found the earliest order of chivalry in Spain—the Order of La Terraza, whose emblem was the pot of white lilies. Nothing remains of the eleventh-century church, but it was rebuilt in the fifteenth, and the cloisters and the royal burial-place in the sixteenth, centuries.
    To recapture the spirit of the Kingdom of Nájera it is necessary to visit in turn the three great abbeys of Rioja: La Cogolla, the home of the great San Millán de la Cogolla, which is called the Escorial of Rioja; Valvanera, the valley of the silver veins, the shrine of the Virgin, the patroness of Rioja, whose image was discovered amid a swarm of bees in the branches of an oak tree: and lastly Nájera itself with its royal tradition. Although there is nothing extant of the early centuries I have a devotion to Santa María la Real because of the magnificent tombs of the Counts of Haro. The most famous of them, Don Diego, was called El Buen Conde de Haro and left a reputation, even after his death, like that of Aristides among the ancient Athenians, for when in later years the new city council of Nájera had to be elected, the citizens gathered around the tomb of Don Diego the Good and the Abbot asked the dead Count in a loud voice three times whether he confirmed the nominations. Diego the Good did not reply, but the worthy citizens of Nájera returned to their houses convinced that he had given his assent. *
    It is necessary to travel with one’s copies of Froissart and Ayala, the two great chroniclers of the fourteenth century when visiting Nájera, for on the wide plain between that town and Logroño took place the great battle between Pedro the Cruel of Castile and his bastard brother, Henry of Trastamara. With Pedro and his Spaniards was his ally, the Black Prince, and the English knights; with Henry was Bertrand Du Guesclin and many knights of France and Spain. Even in English translation Froissart reads like poetry on a spring morning on the bridge of the town, where part of the fierce battle took place. Froissart, as his biographers have described him, was in youth and old age one who rejoiced mightily in dances and carols and in hearing minstrels and poems. He was inclined to love all those who loved dogs and hawks and ‘he pricked up his ears at the uncorking of botdes’. He was pleased with good cheer, gorgeous apparel and joyous society, and his pages were written with gusto. Even the names of the Franco-English lords with their romantic tides read like a rhapsodic poem: The Captai de Buch, Olivier Clisson; the Bègue of Villiers, L’Allemant de St. Venant, the Souldich de l’Estrade.
    How different is the style of Froissart to the balanced periods of the great chronicler, Pedro Lopez de Ayala, the satirist of society, who was taken prisoner by the Black Prince in this battle! He, like the proverbial Vicar of Bray, was an expert at changing sides, but on that occasion his intuition failed him. He has described his own character in an immortal phrase: ‘And King Pedro’s affairs