Discovering the Liebana: The Fountain and its lost Romanesque

After the most rugged part of the gorge, far from even those abyssal lows where rivers like the Deva continue faithful to the Jewish paschal custom, metaphorically and comparatively speaking, of washing the feet of the most pronounced mountains, executing the water for their dance and song for leaving them polished and bright in the morning sun, a sign at the entrance to the town of La Hermida serves as a hook to attract the interest of the visitor passionate about Art.

It is difficult for this one, after leaving behind the most complicated route, not to be tempted, thinking that those insignificant 5 kilometers, which according to the poster separate him from the village of La Fuente and its Romanesque church, are not, if not, the prelude necessary for a great adventure.

Still mountainous, the county road that runs parallel to the La Hermida gorge, leaves aside the vertigo of the gorges to offer the vision of some meadows, alternating with mountains, the leafy canopy of whose trees sometimes resemble inns where the clouds rest, and whose inclination resembles a metaphorical scale that connects the earth with the sky.

Ups and downs, curves, some closed like the horseshoes of a horse, make that within a few minutes, the bold seeker of artistic sensations thinks that he has hardly moved from the place and that those five kilometers promised by the road sign he has decided keep thinking about adventure, they are as eternal as the most imposing of those mountains that parade with melancholic cadence to your right.

There are several villages that he also leaves behind, as well as many such cows, called roxas or pasiegas, who say goodbye to him indifferently, their long and hairy tails being perfect scarecrow whips.

But at the end, at the foot of a hollow, similar to an oasis lost in the middle of an infinite sea of ​​grass, the traveler, already lost in his nervousness and in view of the long-standing historical-artistic monument of his sleeplessness, knows, without needing to see the poster, which has reached its destination.

La Fuente, is another one of those mountain villages, with enough neighbors and therefore, with enough entity to leave behind the denomination of village.

Located at the foot of the road - it does not take long for the traveler to suppose a connection with the general road that ends in Santo Toribio and further down the Palencia mountain - the Romanesque church in front of it, on whose main portico, located in the part of the west, an old man protects himself from the sun sitting placidly in a chair, he has as a dedication the figure of a strange saint, capable of breaking demons, according to his golden legend, to which in Cantabria a special devotion is professed: Saint Juliana.

Belonging to that transition period of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, when the Gothic style began to prevail as a solution to the shortcomings and obsolescence of the Romanesque, the church of Santa Juliana, despite the vicissitudes of time, continues to be a temple not lacking at all, of a certain sweetness and elegance.

Improvised guide and Cicerone, the loquacious old man constitutes, for the lucky traveler, an unexpected well of wisdom, whose freshness seems delicious to partially satisfy his insatiable desire to know.

And although in reality, the story that the old man tells does not differ much from a sad but common story reflected in the vast majority of temples of his class, the traveler takes notes of everything that he tells him, although he forgets, as always, one thing essential: ask your name.

His anonymous informant, then, tells him that the temple was burned down during the hard episodes of the Civil War; which later served as a barn and corral where to keep livestock; that even in its interior a family of gypsies found accommodation and that it was restored relatively recently.

Unfortunately, he knows nothing of the origin of those mysterious medieval stonemasons who, as shepherds and transhumants, left an indelible mark of their passage through those mountains.

But the traveler, grateful to the goddess Fortuna for having made the decision to follow his instinct, knows that he will find his mark again in other places not without interest in this intimate universe of Nature, Art and Culture, which is the Liebana.

NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property.