Good Gothic, Santiago...

A well-known and very respected architect had invited Lavinia Rivers to visit the Casa Gótica in Santiago de Compostela. He didn’t know her at all, although he had seen her around the city, but he has invited her after overhearing a conversation she was having with a group of friends in a bar they often go to: O Asasino. (The bar should not be confused with a tiny restaurant with almost the same name that has been defunct for several years now. However, it does see itself as an heir to the reputation of being extremely reasonable in price and serving a small selection of traditional Galician pinchos or tapas of huge proportions. The owners clearly know how to attract a regular clientele. Nobody seems to know the reason for the name, O Asasino, The Assassin.)

O Asasino is a place no secret should ever be told, frankly, nor should any other information be shared if it is not meant to be quickly transmitted throughout the city. Even Lavinia knew that, and she had only been discussing the terms used to refer to what in English is a Gothic manor house or other residence. She knew better than to equate Gothic with gótico, but was intrigued by how the term had changed when going from one language to another. Apparently British literature had generated a lot of readership since the appearance of novels like Matthew Lewis’ The Monk (1796) and Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, which had actually appeared two years prior to Lewis’ novel. Still, both uses of ‘Gothic’ had very much to do with darkness and large, well-endowed places of residence.

Outside of Britain, a Gothic manor did not have to be a castle, nor did it need to be very large. Gótico was more of an artistic term, referring to a style that emerged after Romanesque. The female protagonist in the British novels felt fear and the sense of impending danger. A Gothic building had nothing of the novel’s anguish attached to it and belonged to the realm of art historians, architects, and religious scholars. Lavinia knew this.

The architect, whose name was Xosé Manuel Seixas, may not have had bad intentions, but he was not an automatic fan of foreigners who showed up in his city. He liked the idea of playing on the Gothic manor image, which although based in British culture, would be best represented as pazo in the Galician language. After all, a pazo was a large manor house and perhaps mysterious events had occurred in some of them, even if they were not as well known for horrifying incidents such as those at Udolpho or Otranto.

“Would you like to go to see it?” The architect, who actually has a very pleasant face, looked hopeful. “I think you’ll find it worth your time.” He is not trying to crowd her or look pleading. He merely suggests.

On the other hand, there was always the possibility that something could still happen, and since there were many pazos still in existence, both inhabited and abandoned, maybe he wanted to take her to see them. Xosé Manuel didn’t think Lavinia would understand much about them as a cultural icon, so he also promised to show her a pazo. Not right then, but soon. Very soon.

“After that, we should see the Pazo de Oca, which isn’t far at all from Compostela.” Lavinia, a bit hesitant, nodded. She didn’t expect that to happen.

First, however, was the matter of the Casa Gótica, which Xosé Manuel knew quite well from some of the restauration work he’d directed there.

The Casa Gótica of Santiago was constructed in the fourteenth century and was also known as the house of King Pedro. It was listed by tourist web sites, but to be honest, not many tourists took the time to visit it. The structure was not very imposing, even with the iconic traceried windows, and was located in a less-visited part of Santiago, the street known as San Miguel dos Agros. To be honest, there were many residents of the city who couldn’t locate it.

The building Xosé Manuel had proposed they visit had once been home to the Pilgrimage Museum (which has since moved to the Acibechería). After the new museum had been created, the original site had been transformed into the library for the Museo das Peregrinacións. The new site was much better and had countless visitors annually.

The Casa Gótica, now repurposed and fully restored, was staffed by knowledgeable people, including librarians, and had computer stations for researchers, but despite the attention given to the stone structure, the vestiges of its history as a residence were minimal. It was not for tourists, really, except for the external walls and its placement looking toward the big monastery of San Martiño Pinario, located to the back of the world-renowned Catedral.

Lavinia realized she was becoming the American everybody felt the need to educate regarding Galician history, because she already knew about the Casa Gótica and its history. Xosé Manuel apparently thought she was clueless, but maybe it wasn’t his fault, since most foreigners were clueless about anything beyond the Catedral and where to get good seafood. She decided to accept the invitation to see the building’s interior, and with good reason. She did not say that she already knew something about the building, because one always learns more when the locals do the explaining instead of when one reads from a web site.

The Casa Gótica that now housed the library for the Museo das Peregrinacións but once was museum itself was certainly something that piqued Lavinia’s curiosity. The architect was counting on precisely that, because he knew the library was a great draw for the researcher - for any researchers. Once Lavinia was in there, he thought it might not be difficult to stage an accident. When had he promised her there were good research materials, he really didn’t know what she was researching and what types of documents she was interested in consulting. He could thinks only of luring her there. He’d figure out the details of the plan later. Falls might happen anywhere, right?

The next day, Xosé Manuel and Lavinia visited the library and she was properly impressed. Her questions indicated a real interest in both the building and its uses over the centuries as well as curiosity as to the actual holdings of the collection. In fact, she asked too many questions - ones an architect cannot answer - and so a librarian on the staff spent a good deal of time with her. She particularly wanted to know more about women’s garments in the time of the pilgrimages, from the twelfth century to about the fifteenth. The architect couldn’t see how that constituted serious research - women’s clothing? - but it was related to Lavinia’s work on how women had to dress in order to go out into the world, when so many of their sex were relegated to the home. 

In addition, as has been noted elsewhere, Lavinia was extremely fond of cross-dressing. Women throughout history knew that their garments could prevent them from participating in many activities. Long skirts were a real handicap and the proper attire opened many doors. Dressing as a member of the male sex had distinct advantages. The architect had to look patient as she pored over the catalogue, and selected an entry she wanted to see.

“Obrigada,” she said to the librarian, who had located exactly the right article on women who had made the pilgrimage to Santiago from various sites in Europe. “I can’t finish it right now, but may I come back?” She wasn’t sure about the protocol for consulting the holdings, some of which were rather old and fragile. The librarian, Beatriz Lores, would later send Lavinia the PDF of the article. Just another example of Galicians’ willingness to help those who wanted to learn more about the history, since access was supposed to be approved first.

Xosé Manuel was frustrated that he had not been able to get the American researcher into a dark corner - and not for a romantic tryst, but for other reasons - so he decided not to chance a maneuver that might be spotted by anybody in the building. He suggested they visit the newly discovered claustro gótico, thinking it was another way to get her into an old building. He needed a reason to invite her, so decided to insist on the common term of gótico, Gothic. 

Lavinia had at first felt apprehensive, but the second invitation so fast on the heels of the first made it seem like he was interested in her. He must have thought she would feel flattered, but that was hardly the case. She was completely uninterested in the man. It was only the buildings and her history that spoke to her. However, she needed to be careful, something told her. The calm expression he wore was a bit too calm, controlled. He was stiff, she realized. Not hard, like the ancient stones, but stiff.

“Sure, as long as there’s still some light to see it, I’d love to go,” said Lavinia, although she didn’t mean the love part, not a bit.

Ignoring her lack of interest in him, Xosé Manuel made a conversational detour. He counted off a number of famous pazos galegos. He admitted they didn’t quite fit Gothic manor house decor or architecture, but they were definitely manor houses. He seemed bent on educating her or he looked like he wanted to, rather. The amount of information he had at his fingertips was impressive - maybe too impressive, as if he were trying to soften her up or distract her. After all, such generosity from a stranger didn’t feel right.

Against her better judgment but in step with her curiosity, Lavinia agreed. After all, it was part of her goal of learning more about Galicia. She had always been fascinated by history, even if in Santiago so much was church history and her main focus had always been women’s experience.

“What is the real story here?” Lavinia wondered, convinced now that showing her the Gothic parts of Santiago de Compostela was not really an act of generosity. Her companion seemed nice and was certainly knowledgeable about his field, but he was a little too anxious to entice her into the buildings. She was not yet aware that some architects in the city were not pleased by her presence there, and even if she had known, she would not have automatically been suspicious of the one who had overheard her conversation with her friends. Maybe she should have been.

“I do not scare easily. And I really don’t want to look like I’m ungrateful for kind gestures.” She said this to herself alone.

However, Lavinia couldn’t help pondering what Xosé Manuel was doing, and so she kept trying to read something - good or bad, dangerous or innocuous - in his expression. There was nothing she can detect, for the moment. Because she was unsure of his intentions, she decided that the safest tactic is to play dumb, to slip into the clueless American role. She would let him lead her and would not allow him to see how nervous she felt.

The pair headed in the direction of the outer circle of the city, where the old part or casco vello ends. It’s approximately where the ancient wall with its seven gates once stood, although the wall has been quite absorbed by modern structures in a sort of organic cannibalism. The shapes and streets of the ninth century remain, but they are subsumed by the new life style that forgets them until something happens to remind them of what was once there. This is the case of the claustro gótico that they were going to visit. 

The claustro was erected perhaps in the eleventh century and its remnants had always been visible in the arcos of Los Porches bar. People would go into the bar on the old street and not think about the imposing stone semicircles, so accustomed were they to the bar’s decor. Then one day somebody had the idea of renovating Los Porches and suddenly a whole cloister sprang to life in the center of the city. It was a big deal, until it wasn’t.

The reality of Santiago is that when the palimpsest is broken open, people marvel and are curious, but then there is no way to adjust the modern city to the old one. To unearth part of the exterior wall requires rerouting a main street around the wall. To reveal a big old cloister means questioning the right to exist of a pharmacy or flower shop. The old once again gives way to the new. To protect it, stones are replaced and sealed up. Maybe somebody gives a talk, but the funds never appear and history sinks back into oblivion.

Lavinia was just too curious - make that too interested - to refuse the opportunity to look through the window of the centuries. Her architect companion seems to know how they can get a glimpse of the cloister.

Technically, the Gothic construction is not a manor house at all. It is part of a church, but it is associated with a priest’s residence. When that function terminated, it seems to have last been used as a home for girls. What ‘home for girls’ meant wasn’t clear to anybody, least of all Lavinia. Were they orphans? Did they live and study in that place? When did it have that use and for how long? Was it the fifteenth or sixteenth century and where are the documents that will shed light on it? And who decided the best thing to do was build a bar which may or may not have started out with the unappealing name of Los Porches, precisely in a narrow street with little room for porch-like structures?

Lavinia knew by now that the Gothic structures in UK and Galicia were pretty far apart, and that British writers had showed that as well. By now she had lost interest in the literary Gothic, though, and needed to know what it had signified in the city where she now resided. It was a style that had barely survived there. It seemed to have gone underground. It had been almost - but not quite - forgotten.

Lavinia Rivers was thinking of all these things as she entered the cloister behind Xosé Manuel, and she was thinking about how it was a shame nobody in the government had seen fit to restore and lay bare that part of the palimpsest. She was thinking about it so hard that she could only see the fragments of the space, its high ceilings, its air stretched upward to a light it rarely saw any more.

She was so absorbed in this claustro gótico that was by no means a manor house but had all the same mystery and air of the sublime, that she did not notice when the architect turned and left the cloister, gently closing the heavy oak door behind him.