Perhaps it is an exaggeration to speak of capital cities in some mountainous councils, such as Teverga, whose towns, which generally do not go beyond being small population centers, barely reach, for the most part, having a magnitude greater than that of a simple village.
But given that we live in a world where it seems that we feel the urgent need to catalog everything with labels, more or less adequate, we will say then, to comply with the standards of rigor, that La Plaza is the capital of the council of Teverga.
A place that is possibly better known to lovers of Art and adventure, for such significant details, such as: first, having a vertiginous route, known as Senda del Oso, not only brings us to the knowledge of a A habitat that until relatively modern times was home to such a superb animal, so linked to the legendary history of the Principality, with the death of Fabila, son and continuator of the dynasty founded by Don Pelayo, but also invites us to penetrate the secrets of a truly prodigious and privileged nature and secondly, it is also the place where one of the oldest groups of religious art displayed in Asturias is located: the collegiate church of San Pedro.
Talking about the collegiate church of San Pedro de Teverga can make us remember, if we let ourselves be carried away by the romanticism of comparison, the charismatic story of Mary Shelley, 'Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus', where the alienated scientist dreamed of emulating God, using various parts to form a perfect human being, which comes to mean, that applied to this place, it would be basically the same as saying that it is made of so many artistic scraps from different times, which in itself constitutes a metaphorical onion, in whose layers elements so disparate in time are appreciated, such as pre-Romanesque, Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque, among others.
The first impression of it, we have it as soon as we put our feet inside and observe the capitals that support the columns that support the framework of the nave. Some capitals, which due to their size, immediately bring to mind the gigantic capitals of the crypt of San Virila, in the Navarrese monastery of Leire, located on the Camino de Santiago and a short distance from the Yesa reservoir and that, like these, are also unusually low, a detail that indicates that over time they are sinking more and more into the earth.
The motifs, roughly carved, are representative of an art, the pre-Romanesque, which still included certain references of an animistic nature, as evidenced by the figure of an officiant wearing a ritual animal mask, as well as the linearity of other models, both of animals of the environment as warriors, with lunar and solar symbols, which indicate, in addition to the more or less superstitious beliefs of the time, also important factors of their way of life.
One of the most notable pieces, both for its beauty and for its mystery, is the superb example of Gothic Christ that crowns the head of the temple: a Christ carrying, in turn, a small box-reliquary on his neck, which when It was opened for a restoration, it was discovered that it contained sand that once analyzed, it was determined that it came from the Holy Land, probably from the same city of Jerusalem.
The cloister, probably a substitute for the old one, apart from its fatal state of semi-neglect, contains some interesting and quite old elements, among which the archaic references to knights and fleurs de lises, as well as the presence of ancient sources, stand out. whose motifs can also be seen in the references to those curious characters with lianas that sprout from their mouths, which are popularly called 'green-men', have an eminently Celtic character, representing those spirits of nature - Asturian mythology tells us about nymphs or Xanas, nuberos, diaños and a long etcetera of fabulous beings - who were once worshiped.
But the collegiate church of San Pedro also has a small museum of more or less extraordinary pieces, which are worth knowing, because among them are some of the jewels that belonged to Queen Doña Urraca and there are also some magnificent capitals, of Romanesque origin, whose provenance is still not entirely clear, since it is not known if they belonged to a church in the vicinity, of which there is no evidence, or were part of the small cloister that was replaced by the current one, in the 17th-18th centuries.
It also has this small museum, with two glass coffins, in which you can see the mummified bodies of Pedro Analso de Miranda, who was not only prior of this collegiate church, but also bishop of Teruel, inquisitor and adviser to King Felipe V and his son, whose abuse and wrongdoing led to him being brutally murdered, and the deep gash produced by the dagger that cut his throat can be observed, an episode that led to a multitude of stories being born around both figures dark and legends of curses, which penetrated very deeply among the superstitious people of the place.
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