Authors: James Michener
At the round earth’s imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
What of the cathedral itself? Could any church be worthy of
such an entrance? At Compostela the interior is about what it
should be, if one thinks of this building as the spiritual center of
a religious nation. It is beautifully Romanesque and cluttered
with just enough paraphernalia to remind one that this is Spain.
In spirit it is very warm, in aspect majestic, and in its operating
manifestations devout. The first thing one encounters inside the
church itself is a statue to the man who carved the portico, for
the intricate work which I have just described appears to have
been accomplished by one man whose name is known: Maestro
Mateo (in Galician, Mestre Mateu), a Spaniard who worked in
northern Spain during the last third of the twelfth century.
Documentary records state that he finished the portico in 1188
and it is supposed that it occupied him for about twenty-five
years. His statue, which he may have carved himself, is a properly
jaunty thing whose head is covered with lively stone curls, and
through the centuries it has been the custom of all who visit
Maestro Mateo’s supreme work to bow before the kneeling statue
and to touch one’s head against his in hopes that some of his
genius may rub off. O Santo d’os Croques, he is known in
Galician, the Saint of the Bumps, and I, like many others, have
touched my head against his, hopefully. When I reflect that this
great artist is generally unknown, while much lesser figures of the
Italian Renaissance are treasured as geniuses, I wonder at the
unfairness of history, for to compare Maestro Mateo with those
lesser but more famous artists is like comparing the Himalayas
with the Poconos of my home district. The Poconos are lovely,
for sure, but to mistake them for the Himalayas is an error.
I was fortunate in reaching Compostela at the precise point in
the year when I could best witness the significance of the town
and its cathedral in Spanish life, for El día de Santiago (The Day
of St. James) occurs each year on July 25 and is the occasion for
a religious celebration of great dimension. Toward midnight on
the evening of the twenty-fourth it seemed as if everyone in the
city had crowded into the plaza before the cathedral, where for
two days workmen had been hiding the façade behind a huge
wooden imitation featuring a panel with the words ‘Al Patrón de
España.’ Now, at eleven, two large rockets were sent aloft to
explode with a force so strong that my coat was lashed by the
following blast of air. Then to constant applause one rocket after
another lifted into the air for about half an hour. I had noticed
earlier that this display, which had been publicized during the
preceding week, was to be in the hands of a firm from La Coruña,
and since the best fireworks are generally considered to come
from Valencia, I expected little, and during the first half-hour
saw nothing to make Valencia worry.
But after the regulation rockets had been fired, those that
exploded in shimmering white or red, the good men of La Coruña
let go. On a series of wagon wheels stuck on poles about the plaza
they set loose some contraptions that were dazzling, each
consisting of at least eight radically different sequences timed to
explode one after the other over a period of at least two minutes,
so that one wondered how the first charges could ignite without
detonating the others. While the crowd was marveling at this, the
La Coruña men produced their specialty: a large rocket which
climbed in a zigzag pattern to about a hundred yards in the air,
then stopped, dashed off parallel to the earth for a hundred yards,
where it died in a soft hissing sound, but when it had almost
reached the earth it gave forth a huge burst of flame, another
rocket fired, and the whole thing went back into a giant orbit that
took it higher than before, ending in a loud explosion and a blaze
of multicolored lights. It was quite a rocket, much more complex
than anything Valencia had shown, and the crowd cheered.
But there was still more! On a distant building far across the
plaza a brilliant ball of light began to blaze, and on a thin wire
that none of us had noticed before, it sped in wild flight some
two hundred yards and crashed directly into the false façade of
the cathedral, after which it sped back up the wire to the point at
which it had begun; but few saw its journey end, because when
it struck the cathedral the entire false front burst into flame and
for at least four minutes we saw such a popping of lights, such a
rain of rockets and such a confusion of colors that no eye could
possibly have followed all that was happening. The whole cathedral
seemed to be ablaze, and at the end some sixty standing rockets
were automatically ignited and these went off in all directions,
filling the sky with flaming color.
Apparently the residents of Compostela are more accustomed
to fireworks than I, because next day the local newspapers reported
that ‘the traditional illumination of the façade went off as usual
with nothing special to report.’
At dawn on the twenty-fifth, large black limousines begin to
arrive at the Hostal de los Reyes Católicos. In the early 1500s this
had been the foremost hospital in the world, a center of medical
learning reputed to be without equal, for it had been established
by Queen Isabel and King Fernando as a refuge for those many
pilgrims who reached Compostela in a state of exhaustion after
negotiating the pass at Cebrero and the bitter mountains of
Galicia. Now the majestic building, constructed around four
different courts, each an architectural masterpiece, serves as a
luxury hotel, and in its spacious lounges the early-morning visitors
munch cakes and fruit with their coffee.
They are politicians from Madrid and officers from the naval
base at El Ferrol del Caudillo, the Galician birthplace of
Generalísimo Franco at the northwest tip of Spain. Spaniards say
that if Franco had been born one step farther west, he’d have been
a norteamericano.
By midmorning the plaza is filled with army units in brown
uniforms, accompanied by a competent brass band which plays
marches. A small cannon booms out a nineteen-gun salute to
Santiago, a military greeting to a military saint, which is not
surprising in a land where in 1962 the mummified left arm of
Santa Teresa, during a grand tour of the nation, was officially
received in Madrid with the military honors due to a
‘captain-general in active command of troops.’ Additional
dignitaries appear in full morning dress, and soon one portion
of the plaza is filled with handsome-looking men in various
costumes, all prepared to pay homage to the great saint who had
led the nation to victory over the Moors, over the Incas and Aztecs
and over most of the armies of Europe.