We take a trip, ostensibly to visit rock art in Cantabria and Asturias. But to get there we need to cross the great plain of Aragon, and the territory that comprises southern Navarra, northern Leon and Rioja. Much of the way is dotted with strange, irregular mountain ranges; while still in Catalunya, near Lleida, these consist of jagged formations that resemble stalactites, but deeper into Aragon there are flat-topped pyramidical shapes, below which stand enormous livestock factories for the production of pig-meat (‘farming’ is too kind a term to apply to this harvesting of the pig on a vast, industrial scale). In 2017, Aragon overtook Catalunya as the biggest producer of pork in Spain. Currently over 15% of the region’s workforce is employed in the industry, accounting for 11,000 jobs. The conditions under which these animals are kept are unimaginably bleak, as this article by an animal rights group explains. These sinister death camps litter the countryside for miles on end, and make me seriously re-evaluate the merits of a bacon sandwich.
Into Rioja, as one might expect, porcine production is replaced by cultivation of the grape, and the road sweeps through endless vineyards. As we drive into the greener landscape of Cantabria, and leave the dreary motorway to climb through the sierras of this green land, it all begins to look a bit like home, assuming that ‘home’ is anything more than an illusion, a fleeting vision cast down in childhood and sustained for lack of any better word. The weather changes, too, and grey clouds begin to gather, promising a storm that will arrive later in the day, once we arrive at our destination, near the shores of the Atlantic.
We stop off for a picnic, in the car, because it doesn’t look too inviting out there. ‘Out there’ is the Embalse del Ebro, a natural reservoir formed by the river Ebro a few miles downstream from its source, and a place where it gathers its resources for a 900 kilometre journey to the sea, slicing through northern Spain, before forming a spidery delta in the province of Tarragona, and eventually discharging into the Mediterranean. The river gives its name, via Greek and Latin to the Iberi, or Iberians — the name by which the people of the peninsular were once known. Its name has also gone down in history as providing the setting for the deciding battle of the Spanish Civil War.
Arriving at Santillana del Mar, a small medieval town, turned into an extended tourist walkway, the long awaited deluge finally arrives. We hide out in our ancient hotel and wait for the storm to pass before setting out into the village, which features in the 2016 movie, Finding Altamira — in which Antonio Banderas stars as Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, who found the Altamira cave in 1879, but whose discovery was rejected by the leading archaeologists of the day as a fake.
The town of Santillana del Mar is supposedly nicknamed ‘The Town of Three Lies’ because it is neither sainted (Sant), nor flat (llana) nor is it by the sea (del Mar).
The light of early evening, following the storm, casts the sandstone building of the Colegiata in resplendent light. In La Nausée (Nausea) Jean-Paul Sartre refers to Santillana as ‘le plus joli village d’Espagne’ (the prettiest village in Spain) which seems at the very least an exaggeration, if not actually a lie.
