23/05/2008
Vitoria-Gasteiz, 23rd May 2008.- The author Julio
Llamazares will be presenting his latest book in Vitoria next
Wednesday. ‘Las rosas de piedra’ is an unprecedented journey around
Spain through its cathedrals, including Vitoria’s Gothic monument. He
will be giving a talk in the Cathedral’s portico at 8 p.m. as part of
the “Encounters with the Cathedral” programme organised by the Santa
María Cathedral Foundation. Free entry until capacity reached.
“This is a journey through time and geography
(...) I set out as the third millennium was starting and one day I hope
to reach the end, having travelled to all the cathedrals in this
country”, says Julio Llamazares at the start of the first volume of Las
Rosas de Piedra, which covers the cathedrals in the northern half of
Spain, and which he hopes to complete with the second volume he is
currently working on.
In the case of the Cathedral of Santa María in Vitoria, we see the
traveller inquiring about “the interminable work being carried out in
Vitoria’s Cathedral, the restoration programme worth 5 billion. It is a
sign of the times when those who complain the most are those who
receive the most”, says the author, who particularly emphasised the
political push coming from the people, which highlights the
differential nature of this phenomenon.
True to his idea of Spain, Llamazares makes six journeys, pointing out
his own sentimental frontiers, because the narrator-traveller does not
believe “in other frontiers dictated by taste”.
His first journey takes him to Galicia. Santiago, Tuy, Orense and Lugo
precede his incursion into the once powerful diocese of Mondoñedo,
where a cloaked feudalism still remains, inspired by the traditional
spirit of Galicia. In The Lost Kingdom (El reino perdido) that linked
Asturias and León, he finds the cathedrals of Oviedo, León with its
sickly stone, Astorga, Zamora, the two cathedrals in Salamanca and one
in Ciudad Rodrigo, which is apparently the smallest bishopric in Spain.
The Site of Old Castile (Donde la vieja Castilla) is the
chapter dedicated to the cathedral of Santander that was destroyed by
fire, moving on to the filigree work of Burgos, and the cathedrals of
Valladolid and Ávila before arriving at the three Basque capitals, then
Pamplona, Calahorra and discovering the story of the cockerel and hen
who live in the cathedral of Santo Domingo de la Calzada, in La Rioja.
Aragon from north to south (Aragón de norte a sur) sparks strong
memories for the traveller, and from the pearl of the Pyrenees, in
Jaca, he travels to the poverty of Albarracín’s Cathedral, passing
through the overwhelming Cathedral of El Pilar, a kind of smaller-scale
Vatican; Aragon makes him recall the liturgies he practiced as a child.
The volume draws to a close with the Cathedrals of Catalonia (Las seos
de Cataluña), taking him to Lérida, Barcelona, Gerona and San Feliu de
Llobregat, among others.