Happy Halloween!
This morning I got up early, showered and went down to the Cathedral Square. I toured one of the Cathedral museums and at 10:00 AM was outside waiting for one of the Free City Tours to begin when I ran into Giorgio.
This picture was not taken in the Cathedral Square. Giorgio is the guy in the middle. We hugged and congratulated each other for making it to Santiago and made plans to go to dinner tonight with Marco. Marco is the guy in the picture standing to Giorgio’s right.
I took Giorgio to the Pilgrim Office to get his Compostela and hustled back to the Cathedral Square to catch up with the tour.
This is David our tour guide and the founder of the Santiago Free City Tour company. He is a great guy and was a really knowledgeable tour guide. He spent a couple of years doing graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, a known hotbed of communists, socialists, and anarchists. I repeatedly asked David what he studied at Cal Berkeley and he was as evasive as OJ Simpson on cross examination.
We started our tour in the Cathedral Square. The building in the background of this picture is the Cathedral. You can see the west facade of the Cathedral. This is the main entrance to the Cathedral. Normally Pilgrims enter through this main entrance and walk through the famous Door of Glory built by the Cathedral’s renowned architect Master Mateo. The Door of Glory is truly a masterpiece of stone sculpture. The Bible and its main characters come alive in this remarkable Biblical storybook in stone. The central column depicts Christ in Glory flanked by his apostles and, directly underneath, St. James sits as an intercessor between Christ and the Pilgrims. You will have to take my word for this because they have the Door of Glory closed for restoration. Bummer!
As you are facing the west facade of the Cathedral you turn to your left and there is the most expensive hotel in Santiago.
This is the Hostal dos Reis Catolocos. It is a parador, not to be confused with a paramour. Although I imagine you can take your paramour to a parador. A parador is an old historic building in Spain that they have fixed up and turned into a fancy schmantsy hotel for rich American touragrinos. Rooms in this particular parador start at 300 euros a night. Yikes! That is about the total that I have spent for lodging during my 41 days on the Camino.
Directly opposite the west facade of the Cathedral is the building that houses the Santiago City Hall and the government offices for the province of Galicia. On top of this building is a statue that used to be called St. James The Moor Slayer.
If you look closely you can see hacked up Moors at the feet of the horse St. James is riding. Legend has it that when the Spanish were trying to throw the Moors out of Spain, at the penultimate battle St. James appeared out of the clouds riding a white stallion and proceeded to hack up the entire Moorish army. After this battle the Moors gave up, left Spain and returned to North Africa. I don’t blame them. Who wants to fight the Spanish Army when they have St. James to call on if things go to Hell in a hand basket during a decisive battle. After that St. James The Moor Slayer became the patron saint of Spain. St. Patrick drove the snakes 🐍 out of Ireland and St. James drove the Moors out of Spain. It appears that becoming a saint back then required a lot of hard work.
David, our tour guide, then took us inside the Cathedral. This is the statue of St. James The Moor Slayer in the Cathedral.
Notice the flowers at the feet of the horse. They were put there to hide the hacked up Moors. In order to be politically correct the Spanish are trying to remove or hide the hacked up Moors from all the statutes and paintings of St. James The Moor Slayer and don’t call him that anymore. He is now just plain old St. James.
This is the silver casket that, according to legend, contains the remains of the apostle and cousin of Jesus, St. James, formerly known as St. James The Moor Slayer. Kind of like The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.
This is the main altar at the Cathedral.
This is the altarpiece at one of the side chapels at the Cathedral.
St. Christopher lit a candle and we all said a prayer for Anna.
This is the altarpiece in another side chapel in the Cathedral.
Now we are outside the Cathedral continuing our tour of the old city center. This is a chestnut roasting wagon.
These are the two Marys. During the Franco years women were strongly encouraged to dress and act very conservatively. These two sisters, both named Mary due to a total lack of imagination by their parents, dressed up in colorful clothes and almost clownish makeup and paraded around the streets of Santiago thumbing their noses at Franco and his goons. They died in the 1990s but they are part of the folklore of Santiago.
This guy was a beatnik writer and one of the original hipsters in Santiago.
The guy to the right in the picture, not the guy to the left.
This was the original Pilgrim, King Alphonse II. He was a king in Rioja. When he found out they had discovered the remains of the Apostle St. James in Santiago he travelled, or made a pilgrimage, to check it out.
This is mile marker 0 for all the Caminos. It is located in the Cathedral Square.
That’s it for today.
I hope everyone is having a great Halloween 🎃 👻 !
Good evening from Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
AbeAndMarkontheCamino 