Seated as a maiden asleep by an ancient spell, there, where the weary currents of the old Duero wander melancholy towards that land of fados and poets, which is Portugal, however, leaving its old plantation on a side that misses the joy of its old vines, the city of Toro stands up, collected with itself with tired eyes and sighs, which accompanied by irrepressible tears, cry today at the memory of a great lost history.

Perhaps it is true that memory, after all, and as Bierce stated conclusively, is the greatest luxury of the unfortunate and the glories of the past, the greatest credit of its cultural heritage.

Although important, majestic and with the honorary title of being among the most relevant of the Romanesque temples considered as ‘the dome's dome’, the Collegiate Church of Santa María is an immeasurable poem of perfection and beauty.

Crossing its main portico, passing under the watchful eye - they say that lost in some unfathomable place of infinity - of angels and musicians, invites, at least, to dress the spirit of pomp and circumstance.

Now, once inside, recovered from the first impact produced by the icy breath of its ancient columns, which are lost, perhaps looking for God in the heights, as Goethe affirmed, it is difficult not to feel a certain apprehension and remembering the charismatics verses of Cavafis –author of that immortal dedicated to Ithaca- think, for a moment, having penetrated a cemetery.

And then observe, minutes before, perhaps, that Stendhal syndrome embraces the soul with a beast's paw, that a purely romantic cemetery is trodden, where the deceased are magnificent artistic marvels, that like incorrupt bodies, enjoy of the privilege of immortality.

Although his family tree is anonymous, in most cases his epitaphs manage, by themselves, that centuries stop at that Borgen paradox, where Yesterday is the Still and also the Still: Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, baroque.

In many cases, related to this Stars Way, its messages are apprehended with the persistence of the old conditions, under the watchful eye of the Patron Saint of the pilgrims: Santiago el Mayor himself, the one who under the name of Boanerges or Son of Thunder, it is supposed to rest eternally in Compostela.

The evident pregnancy of the Virgin, a subject not unknown in Romanesque and Gothic sculpture, but not too usual either, rising on a pedestal on the base of which the old myth of Original Sin is recreated, contrasts sharply with the intrinsic beauty in its so-called Portico of the Majesty, where it is summarized, beautifully polychrome the spirit that encouraged life and medieval thought.

NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property.