Cemetery of the Living

Part I

I knew - more or less - what a quintana was, but what I knew was definitely less than more. I never bothered with tracking down the origin of the word, because I knew the place that was a quintana in Santiago de Compostela. You might say I was content with my ignorance, although ultimately I had to find out. 

(I just googled it. A quintana apparently was one of the roads in a Roman camp where people sold food. So… like a market square, maybe.)

About feeling happy with not knowing the history of the word nor the place with that name in this city that stole my heart, slowly but surely: that only lasted until things started to change. I need to explain what happened, if you have a minute. 

Those who meet me soon figure out that Santiago and I are joined in a rather strange way. I talk to the city, although I try hard not to do that out loud. We do have conversations, though, and hopefully nobody overhears them. I try not to move my lips in my part of the dialogue because I dislike attracting attention.

It is hard not to stay fit when you live here and find yourself doing half a dozen errands a day that take you from one end to the other of the city, on foot. However, fitness is not my focus at the moment; I want to explain how I’ve come to find so much comfort in my quintana that is, or was, a burial ground. Trust me, I have good reason to feel the way I do, and it’s not because I am morbid. Not in the least.

First, however, please allow me to back up a bit and briefly describe my previous favorite spot in the whole city. Actually, it still is a favorite spot, but it has come to share that honor with the more grandiose yet barren quintana. I am referring to little Fonseca Square, a praza de Fonseca, which faces the building of the same name - o Pazo de Fonseca - and which has an internal patio with - no surprise - a statue of the famous man himself. Alfonso de Fonseca III (1475-1534), associated with the consolidation of the city’s famous university in 1495. Well, maybe he wasn’t smart enough at eighteen to found it, but he supported its consolidation when he was still young.

(If you’ve been feeling burdened by all the historical facts, believe me, I’ve kept the list brief. I have included the bare minimum so you can get a sense of what happens when I come to this little corner of the world. Yes, it’s overwhelming.)

(If you are also noticing how short phrases keep slipping into my story as I’m trying to tell it, that’s Santiago’s fault. I have learned that one can’t simply describe a part of it without a lot of appendages. The city is all wound up in its past and once you become fully aware that, you have to keep walking in order to find the loose ends that lead to yet another event, famous person, or a work of art. Except those ends never appear, so you keep walking, hoping to figure out how it all fits together so well.)

Today the President of the University has her or his office there - in the pazo or palace - while there is the general library occupying another large part. The building and its corresponding little square - the one that has given me much comfort - are located at the end of the Rúa do Franco, or the Franks’ - as in French - Street. The Franks were one large contingent of pilgrims coming to worship the remains of Santiago in the cathedral. The excessive tourist traffic can’t disguise that medieval element, if only because the worn-to-a-shine stone reveals that millions of visitors have sculpted it over the centuries. 

A lot of the residents dislike the intruders, who are as much pilgrims as persons interested in the saint’s legend and a bit of seafood. Even pilgrims need to eat, it seems. O Franco is often noisy and crowded, but at least it won’t accommodate cars or taxis, and all of the businesses along it - dollar stores and over-priced restaurants - cannot conceal the age of legendary stone street. There is no danger that speculation will lay a hand on the usually bustling route, which runs from the Porta Faxeira to Fonseca Square. 

(Some other time I’d be glad to tell you about Santiago’s seven doors or portas, but not now. There are already a lot of threads to this story.)

The square I especially loved in the earlier years had all this history pulling on me and a constant flow of passersby to watch. It is an intimate space, with its own little and uninteresting fountain. It is literally twenty seconds from the vast Obradoiro Square of the cathedral’s main façade. The Pazo has the statue of the man for whom things are named and who presides over the inner patio that is much larger than my little square. But despite its smaller size, the square watches over the big building. The narrow street on the side of the square farthest away from the big Fonseca building leads slightly downhill to a lot of bars and restaurants with too many visitors - most of whom really only understand fast food. 

There is one restaurant on the Rúa da Raíña, the Queen’s Street, that is my favorite place to eat in the whole world - the María Castaña - but that’s another story. I also need to look up - for the second time - which raíña or queen the street supposedly honors, but I will do that later. It is really hard not to get distracted by all the little threads running through and under this city, in the casco vello - which I call ‘the old part’ rather than the ‘old town’. 

As you can see, my words keep stretching out along my sentences - as if they were moving on to attach to another stone or tree or window in the city. Words like the steps I take - miles a day, often - one after another, connecting things. Stitching.

Little Fonseca appealed to me in the beginning because I felt protected when I was there. I often felt the urge to just sit and see. I could wear the old walls on the opposing sides of the square like a shawl or a blanket. These walls were modest and whitewashed and I heard them speaking softly several times in the evening. More than words, the sound resembled a wordless lullaby. 

On one occasion - how many years ago now? - I selected a gargoyle from one of the roofs on my sheltering walls, and pledged that some day my ashes - part of them, at least - would be spread on top of the gargoyle on the side closer to the cathedral. I had been inspired by Lorca and his lovely poem about a weathervane. If you read it, you’ll understand the comparison.

I kid you not. All these details - and many more I won’t go into - are relevant when considering that I was and am in a foreign country and have always had to use two other languages but cannot use my native one because almost nobody speaks it. The praza or square was a place I could visit and feel safe. Nobody noticed me and nobody ever tried to start a conversation. I could watch the world of Compostela go by, without taking any risks, without making a fool of myself. 

Then things began to happen. You don’t need to know exactly what.The fundamental thing is that while time changes everyone, it doesn’t change Santiago. It can’t. I actually fell in love with the lack of change, the sense of having found my own little house or cradle in this foreign world. I mean I fell in love with the statue man, with the saint and his ability to draw such crowds, with the web that was being spun without my knowing it. With the famous woman of centuries ago who who had given her name to my favorite restaurant that was at most two minutes away. 

It hadn’t been easy to do that, but as they say ‘If the mountain won’t come to Mahomet, the Mahomet must go to the mountain’. I went to the mountain. I became part of it, its granite like a sponge.

Despite all of this, I must have outgrown little Fonseca Square and its protective, low walls - only two stories high, leaving room for sun and rain to enter. I began to feel freer and actually was freer - personally as well as professionally - so I returned to my obsessive walking around the old city. I felt stronger and was. I told myself I was weaving my own web, bringing the city to me, absorbing it through fingertips, measuring its roughness by pulling fingernails across its stony surfaces.

I began to see how a thread of mineral was being formed as I walked, and perhaps it was red, perhaps not. My footsteps followed the path I had no choice but to follow. Warp and weft of medieval life, sometimes I felt like the shuttle. My sense of place, of being tied to Compostela was both exquisite and unforgiving. My former self was being entombed in the city that would never let me go.

I began to leave Fonseca by the back street and usually turned toward the fountain with the horses eternally spouting water, in the Praza das Praterías. Looking up, one of the doors to the cathedral seduces the tourist-pilgrims. There is a set of stairs that also lead, not only to the interior of the temple, but also to a wide open space: A Quintana de Mortos, which connects, through more stairs, to the more elevated section, called Quintana de Vivos. That is where I am now.

I promise to clarify all the foreign words. Let me get a seat on the terrace over here and order a café con leite or an albariño. Then I’ll pick up the thread…

Part II

I am in a large open space with four walls. Two of the four are quite high because they belong to the cathedral and a convent. I think it’s the spaces between the four sides that make it feel so open. There is little to block the sun - or rain - here. 

The legend of the shadow that crosses the square comes to mind. There are theories as to who the heartbroken lover was - a noble or a cleric - and who the beloved was - a nun or a noblewoman. I never wanted to know the scientific explanation.

Tales of tunnels float around Santiago. One supposedly goes beneath the quintana, but a nun I asked didn’t know. She said there was nothing there, but I’ve read there are remnants of another fancy entrance to the cathedral, planned and promoted in the thirteenth century but canned - or forgotten - when the promoter died. I’d like to know why they ditched the construction and if they just covered it over. Quite strange.

There is a huge, pointy grate in the back when you look at the quintana with the cathedral on the left. I’ve written about that before. The thought of a person being impaled on the spikes pretty horrific. It looks aggressive.

The Porta Santa [Holy Door] that opens every seven years when July 25 falls on a Sunday is on this façade. I hope to go some day when I have a couple hours to spend staring at the figures surrounding the door. It was so infuriating when somebody vandalized them. I’m not religious, but I can respect a work of art.

Backing up a bit: I want to get under those stairs beneath the Quintana de vivos,  before I die. Really. I wonder how I can convince the nuns. I also want to visit the aqueducts or whatever they call them, that run beneath the Pilgrimage Museum, which I can almost see from where I’m sitting now.

There aren’t many nuns left in that massive convent of San Paio de Antealtares or San Pelayo as they used to say. It won’t matter if there are no nuns soon, because the nuns aren’t young. I won’t let anything happen to the building.

Back to the discarded architectural project of the thirteenth century: the site became a cemetery at some point - can’t recall the exact date. Smack dab in the city center they began burying the dead, because it was a church atrium and some places do bury people in the churchyard. Some smart person in the 1700s proposed to move the remains, away from the population center. First they took the bones and stuff to Bonaval cemetery then to the modern one of Boisaca. Important, but anonymous bones? What did the movers learn from them? 

I am asking this question as I sit on this terrace, finishing my coffee. A frustrated archaeologist, I want to know more about what might still be here.

Did they find anything of historical value? What was i like for people to have a cemetery under their very noses? I can’t recall if there were any epidemics around the thirteenth century or thereafter. Was there enough water in rainy Galicia to ward off pestilence?

I love the way the set of stairs down in praza das praterías - where silversmiths once plied their trade - lead one to think the only place to go is the cathedral, but then this open space, like a back yard, only with stones and no grass, offers an alternative. I like to think I can play and talk behind the cathedral’s back, play hooky from mass - not that I ever go to mass. East façade.

I meant to look up why both quintanas or squares were placed together. The one for the living - os vivos, as you saw at the beginning - obviously overlooked the other. Grave-dwellers are my favorite bedfellows. But it’s different now. I can see how interesting it is that the city has just kept layering its history over previous layers. Then myths come along and add to the mix. It’s rather difficult trying to keep reality and fiction straight, but I enjoy trying.

Then there’s the convent that faces the Porta Santa. I looked up its history and since some of you may have read it, I won’t repeat it all here. Just the height of the wall, topped by a row of grated windows. Might be cells for the nuns, but who knows? Do they keep watch over the people who cross the Quintana or are they sentinels trying to protect the convent castle?

A Casa da Parra [House of the Vine] Domingo de Andrade, architect. Late seventeenth century Baroque. I went to an art exhibit there once, but it’s been closed for a while. I hear there are now plans to open it. Wonderful! It made me sad to see it shut up and forgotten, only noticed because of its name and the sensual fruit grouped around the door. It might have been a bit of Galician humor to put the fruit and its symbolism in the square with the Holy Door and lots of saints around it. 

Facing the Casa da Parra is another casa built by Andrade. It houses the oldest souvenir shop in Santiago. The owner, Don Marcelino, is ninety and still goes swimming. He has glorious long hair with curls, and is still only about 50% gray. I tell him I’d marry him in a heartbeat, and he reminds me he’s married. I understand, plus I’m not forward like that. Just a joke. We deserve it. I love stopping to speak with him and appreciate the incredible orchids - real ones, several colors - he has growing by the shop door.

My gaze shifts yet again, to the Café Literarios in the Quintana de vivos. It’s a great place to sit and have a mineral water. Great name, too.

José Primo de Rivera. Engraved in the convent wall, but now invisible, as it should be. No dictator should be remembered, and a Spanish one even less.

Batallón Literario 1810. The plaque on the convent commemorating the battalion of university students who went to fights the invading forces of Napoleon. Probably the origin of the cafe name, rather than a reference to book reading.

Stone ledges for people to sit. Surprising soft. I wonder why they were put along the convent wall and when. Who needed to sit and wait in this great space? Mourners?

Cementerio de vivos! [Cemetery of the living!] Rosalía exclaimed she was referring to Santiago de Compostela - although the poem’s title is Santa Escolástica. Was she referring to the quintana, where the dead once were? Or was it the whole city?

Rosalía, I you weren’t condemning this city, you were reclaiming its spaces for its people. I think that because I find so much comfort in the quintanas, despite their prior uses and the fact that it’s an area owned by the Church. 

I keep thinking about Castelao and his skeletons. And Lorca wrote a poem about my quintana before the fascists killed him in 1936.

Layer upon layer. 

I enter, my arms two wings that open and grow, brushing the wall with the holy door facing the sun as it rises and the convent with little black doves holding down the fort, protecting the manuscripts from the eleventh century and written in what seemed to be Galician when I last saw them in the display cases of the religious museum. I might have imagined that, of course.

I didn’t imagine the paintings of all the saints - Rosalía, Escolástica, Rita - nor the silver pelican tearing its breast open to feed its young.

Even more protection than the two small walls of Fonseca. In the Quintanas there is a symphony. A heartbeat. - - - - - - - - - - - -