The Spiritual Heart of Old Europe Aches

A few days ago, I arrived at Santiago de Compostela, in northwestern Spain. This is where the tomb of the Apostle St. James the Greater lies. Every time July 25 falls on a Sunday, Catholics celebrate their Jacobean Holy Year. And that is precisely what happens in 2021. I’ve been on pilgrimage here before, and by now, the Camino de Santiago that crosses Europe would normally be packed with pilgrims from all over the world. This year, however, I find closed hostels, bars with the shutters down, and a shuddering silence that hangs over the World Heritage Site that is this old town. There are no tasty vapors wafting from the seafood restaurants, there are no tourists drinking albariño as if it were water, and there is no trace of those blonde central European pilgrims who brighten up the road and provoke waves of sudden conversions as they pass by. Really, there are no pilgrims from anywhere, because the pandemic restrictions are ruining everything. The narrow streets of the small town of Santiago today are hushed by a veil of mystery that seems straight from a Hitchcock movie, only broken on occasion by the exasperated cry of Galician bagpipes.

In the cathedral, gloom and Gregorian. A couple of ladies pray in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, some priests wait in the confessional to attend, in a multitude of languages, the pilgrims who do not arrive, and a madman crosses the main nave talking to himself and gesticulating wildly. Suddenly, he stops in silence in front of the image of the Apostle, where he prays in silence for a few minutes and seems to regain his sanity.

This strange and solitary climate has allowed me to spend more than 20 minutes in the small crypt, with no other company than the silver urn that houses the remains of the Apostle, without the usual hustle and bustle of visitors. Normally it would be impossible to pray on your knees here without feeling a burst of light hitting the back of your head every other second. (This light, it should be noted, does not often come from the Holy Spirit, but from the cameras of Japanese tourists.)

The whole cathedral is awe-inspiring. Contemplation of the Portico de la Gloria, a Romanesque masterpiece, enlightens the pilgrim on the mysteries of faith: the original sin, the Redemption, and the Last Judgment. But none of it carries the same significance if we ignore the origin of this pilgrimage center, raised in a remote and rainy place of rural Galicia.

According to tradition, Santiago preached Christianity in Hispania (present-day Spain and Portugal), after Pentecost. However, the Spaniards did not receive the Apostle with the solemnity he deserved, and we even failed to comply with the most elementary rules of courtesy: In all honesty, we stoned him (though not fatally).

According to stories from the 13th century, the saint got more than a bit exasperated with our closed-mindedness, and it was then that the Virgin Mary appeared to him standing on a marble pillar. It was the year 40 a.d. and the Virgin, who was still alive in the flesh, asked Santiago to build a church there, which today is the Basilica del Pilar in Zaragoza, the first temple in the world dedicated to Our Lady. The apparition may not have surprised James, who had already seen the resurrection of Jairus’s daughter, had witnessed the Transfiguration, had spoken with the Risen Jesus, and had marveled at the miraculous catch of fish in the Sea of Tiberias. But in later centuries, the memory of this experience encouraged Christians in their struggle against the invading Islam.

Back in Palestine, Santiago was beheaded by Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great, the one from the Massacre of the Innocents, which just goes to show that there is no such thing as a good Herod. According to tradition, the corpse of the Apostle was moved to and buried in Spain, where in the northwest of the country, the passage of time and the mess of history covered over his tracks. Men are too often more concerned with tearing one another’s skin to shreds than with protecting their relics.

In the same place where his trail was lost, one night in the ninth century, when no one remembered the tomb of the Apostle, a peasant named Pelayo saw in the sky a spectacular light show that came to a full stop over the forest. In a show of good judgment, Pelayo took himself for a madman. But it just so happened that the rest of the area’s inhabitants had also seen the lights, and Pelayo was impelled to give testimony to the bishop in that region, Teodomiro, who prayed and fasted for three days — they took their job very seriously back then — and went out to investigate the forest, where he discovered the tomb of the Apostle. The news spread throughout the West at the speed of WhatsApp.

The miracle of the Apostle gave the Christians a crucial impulse to recover Spain, which had been subjected to Islamic rule. But you would be very wrong to believe that the story of the present cathedral, with its thousands of pilgrims, is a fairy tale. The Moors got pretty angry with Santiago because he had nurtured the faith of the Christians. Thus, in 997, the bloodthirsty Almanzor destroyed the cathedral and stole its two bells, as if he were a drunken German tourist visiting modern-day Venice. For reasons unknown, the Moors did not dare touch the tomb of the Apostle, so the Spaniards continued their pilgrimage to the ruins of the cathedral. You see, Christians have adopted the cross as their symbol, so it bears reason that they’re not easily discouraged.

In some strange way, we could say that Almanzor was the first architect of the current Cathedral of Santiago, because thanks to his destruction, the majestic temple we know today was built a century later. By the way: The two bells stolen by Almanzor were returned to their rightful place two centuries later, as were the Moors, who also returned home some time later, in 1492, when the Reconquest ended; although the bells put up less resistance.

In the 14th century — I don’t think Dr. Fauci had been born yet — epidemics prevented further pilgrimages to Santiago, although the route had already begun its decline after Luther’s criticisms. In the 16th century, the English pirate Francis Drake spent his days plundering La Coruña, my hometown, very close to Santiago. It took some time for the people of La Coruña to run the invaders out of town, but one day, perhaps under the influence of rum, Drake boasted that he would soon destroy the city of Santiago de Compostela and reduce the reliquary of the Apostle to ashes. The archbishop of Santiago, in a panic, hid the remains of the Apostle. He hid them and kept the secret so well (he died without saying where they were) that no one was able to find them again until 1877, when it occurred to someone to dig in the only place where they had not yet looked (and to be honest, the first place where I would have done it): behind the main altar. Lo and behold, there it was. And so the great pilgrimages resumed.

Pope Saint John Paul II was the first pope to make pilgrimages to Santiago, in 1982 and 1989, revitalizing the Camino de Santiago. The words he spoke here still move us: “I, from Santiago, send you, old Europe, a cry full of love: find yourself again. Be yourself. Discover your origins. Revive your roots. You can still be a beacon of civilization and a stimulus of progress for the world.”

Although today the restrictions keep the hostels closed, the locals tell me that they will be opened in spring. There are also virtual pilgrimages, as well as the option of lighting candles to the Apostle from the cathedral’s website. In the midst of the pandemic, Pope Francis wanted to make a gesture to the frustrated pilgrims and to Santiago by announcing the exceptional expansion of the Jubilee Year, so that 2022 will also be a Compostelan Holy Year.

There is something miraculous in the air here. Many set out agnostic to do the Camino and return as converts. Others find meaning for their lives. Most of the obese pilgrims come back slim after 200, 300, or even 800 kilometers by foot (I’m not sure there is anything supernatural about that though). And the cathedral archives document hundreds of miracles attributed to the Apostle in this heavenly place, which also boasts the survival of several foiled attacks, including Paulo Coelho’s pilgrimage and the terrifying book that spawned from the experience.

I leave here, finally, caught somewhere between sadness and euphoria, between the empty and melancholic city, and the privilege of having been able to be here at all and tell its story. Santiago de Compostela has been a bulwark of Western Christianity since the Middle Ages, appearing during times of hardship, and, glancing towards the horizon, I suspect that we need it today more than ever. Let us, at least, embark on this pilgrimage in our hearts until we are able to do it by foot.