Cantabria is not just a paradisiacal corner of the spectacular North of Spain, favored by the privileges of having an exuberant nature, where valleys and forests alternate with spectacular mountains and fragmented cliffs that embrace, like a mother, the waters of a legendary sea, such as the Cantabrian.
Cantabria is also the indisputable possessor of an art, the Romanesque, so prodigal that simply starting routes to discover it not only constitutes an exciting cultural adventure, but also provides a much broader vision of a land, some towns, some people and some customs, which are well worth discovering.
Taking Reinosa as a base, that border capital with Palencia and the immeasurable lands of Campoo, which look indecisively towards both the Castilian Plateau and the Palencia Mountain, whose continuation is none other than the impregnable Picos de Europa, our Cantabrian Romanesque route, It begins in a small town, named Olea and in its small hermitage, which, dedicated to the figure of the celestial warrior par excellence, the Archangel Saint Michael, indicates that, already in the past, the ancient Cantabrians worshiped other deities , which had to be fought and, in fact, replaced, with the arrival of Christian evangelizers.
Located about eight or ten kilometers from Reinosa and just a little more than two kilometers from San Martín de Hoyos -a small neighboring town, where we will stop later, because its Romanesque and its beauty are also well worth it- Olea and its simple medieval hermitage, are a haven of tranquility, where it seems that time has stopped.
Small in size and eminently rural, Saint Michael of Olea is one of those hermitages that immediately captivates with its simplicity. Being, as it is, a single nave and discarding the sculptural motifs that abound and overload most of the temples of its time and style, there is no better place to find that inner peace, so necessary for the spirit, that makes us think that the world, the simpler, the more beautiful it is and also, much easier to understand.
That is precisely where its charm lies. Despite being embedded, in a corner formed by the apse, semicircular, as was the tradition in this type of temple, and the nave, a curious and strange sculpture, which shows a character carrying a staff or a cane, which reminds us of , not only to any revered saint of the Christian Sants, or to a bishop -or in its symbolic version, to the shepherd taking care of his sheep- but also, to those pragmatic and romantic characters of the roads, the pilgrims and that search for transcendence, in the most unexpected places in the world. Precisely, like this small Cantabrian town of Olea that I have the enormous pleasure of presenting to you today.
NOTICE: Both the text and the photographs that accompany it, as well as the video that illustrates it, are my exclusive intellectual property and, therefore, are subject to my Copyright.
RELATED MOVIE:
