Castile, so praised and at the same time so mistreated by poets, is a land of contrasts, made up of a multitude of small towns and villages, of which, metaphorically speaking, one could say that they seem like solitary islands, scattered haphazardly in the immensity of an ocean where the wheat eternally gilds.
In contrast, it is not only a land of bread, but also an area of excellent wine -like that one, of recognized quality, that macerates languidly in the cellars beyond the Ribera del Duero- a detail for which in its taverns, in its patron saint festivals and also in those other holy days, popular music insists on a refrain that every traveler knows well: with bread and wine, the road is walked.
Within those solitary islands, which we have said could be their towns, metaphorically and comparatively speaking, their melancholic languor is rewarded by the uncompromising monumentality of some ancient and enigmatic temples, in many cases, that make up one of the world's heritages. greatest of an Art, the Romanesque, which was not in vain designated, due to its breadth and length in time, as the 'art of Christianity' par excellence.
It happens, therefore, that traveling the infinite roads of Castile, the traveler can come across small villages, of barely relevant interest, if it were not for the fact that its twenty houses -some, definitively humiliated by the passage of time and abandonment- swirl around an artistic jewel, such as the church.
This is the case, without going any further, of Sequera de Fresno, a town that already in its name implies part of the characteristics of the place where it is located -the existence of that subtle race of trees- and also, by the way, that probable Celtiberian origin , from where the priests, the famous druids, not only provided themselves with the sacred mistletoe for the potions of their rituals, but also used the characteristics of the different trees, for the preparation, according to the eminent author, Robert Graves, of an alphabet, no less sacred and practically unknown.
Given these antecedents and despite the fact that time, much less the hand of man, has been generous with the most interesting piece of the place, which is none other than its own 12th-century Romanesque church, we can affirm -and this is how any lover of Romanesque art in particular - that this is one of the most significant examples of what many consider the Segovian Romanesque style and more specifically, its relationship with the magnificent stonework workshops that were distributed, from the twelfth century, near Riaza and Sepúlveda, which was not only defined by large populations of Visigothic origin, but also, its reconquest from the Muslims, it can be said that it cost real rivers of blood.
In this way, and despite the many alterations suffered by time and fashion - we must not forget that each century brought its innovations and these, generally, greatly affected the old temples - the Sequera de Fresno temple, dedicated to the figure of Our Lady of the Assumption, it conserves a good part of its Romanesque origins and among them, a good part of that archetypal sculpture, which in the form of capitals and corbels, we must not forget, constituted 'the books' of the that a people was nurtured, that it had no more access to Culture, than what the Holy Mother Church marked it.
But the Middle Ages were not such a dark time, so melodramatic and so attached to always seeing, in the signs of the frequent storms that develop in the area, those visions of the Apocalypse of Saint John, in which many, on the eve of the year one thousand -little or nothing we have changed, in fact, if we remember the psychosis that it caused us, the much hyped proximity to the year two thousand- believed they saw the end of the world.
On the contrary, the medieval stonemasons, apart from sculpting the typical motifs of this Art - foliaceous, mythological and evangelical motifs - it can be seen that they also let themselves be carried away by jokes and enthusiasm and with brazen naturalness, also represented erotic references, which in Basically, they contained a double meaning: moral and playful, also suitable for the purposes of the Church, taking into account the characteristics of the time.
For this reason and because I believe that deep down, traveling is also a way of adhering to the culture and customs of a world in continuous evolution, many times, no matter how bland or irrelevant a place may seem to us, it is not advisable to continue the march, without first stopping to take a look.
In addition, here, in the wastelands of Sequera de Fresno, music lovers can also find another surprise, because since 2005, they have been celebrating the so-called 'Sekera Rock', a modern music festival, which although in recent years it stopped being held due to the pandemic, Covid-19, does not mean that it cannot be rejoined to the attractions of the place in the more or less near future.
NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property and therefore are subject to my Copyright.
