Villalcázar de Sirga: The Miracle Worker

The south facade of Santa Maria la Blanca, Villalcázar de Sirga
Photos in this post 2019 Jessica Knauss 

The first weekend of 2019, I stayed with a friend in Burgos. We were looking for historical excursions (not hard to find!) in the north of the province of Palencia because I've read about the Romanesque wonders there and feel like I haven't seen much of what it has to offer. The pilgrims' Road to Santiago goes through the north of Palencia, and my friend wanted to show me Carrión de los Condes, a stop along the Road with famous Romanesque churches. The map doesn't lie, and right next to that wonderful location, the place name Villalcázar de Sirga set off a million (or maybe fourteen?) bells in my head.

"There's a miracle-working Virgin there," I said. "The Cantigas mention her a lot." As shown in the previous post, there are no fewer than fourteen cantigas (3 percent!) telling only some of the miracles the Virgin Mary performed in the thirteenth century in what was then known as Villasirga.

Fifteenth-century castle at Olmillos de Sasamón 

"We'll have to check it out after Carrión," my friend said. We planned to eat the big midday meal in Villalcázar de Sirga after a morning of other adventures. As it turned out, there was a castle in Olmillos de Sasamón we had to stop and look at, and then the churches in Carrión were so stunning that the only reason I stopped staring was that they closed for siesta. We then headed to where I knew a miraculous Virgin, a little piece of Alfonso X, el Sabio, was waiting for me.

The view from the pub, with Christmas decor 

The town felt deserted. The plaza with the monumental Church of Santa Maria la Blanca radiated silence under a bright winter sun. We went into the charmingly named pub, La Cantigas, to find only the barkeep and owner. They told us the church only opened once a week in the winter for mass on Sundays. We were there on a Saturday. "But the website says..." we started, and they answered that someone had written whatever they felt like about the opening hours, but that church is shut tight except for mass on Sundays. And that a surprising number of people come through asking the same question and blame them for the inconvenience, sometimes with verbal violence! Hardly pilgrim-like! Of course we didn't do that, but returned to Carrión for a nice meal and to reflect on the opportunity: Now we had a chance to return more prepared.

Before the redo trip two weeks later, I read all the Villasirga cantigas and got a sense of the awesome power concentrated here. We learned that the "sirga" in the town's name refers not just to any road, but to the type of road that follows along a canal. Given that it's named for a place of transit, Villasirga has always been a site of reference for travelers. Perhaps for that reason, it is the only town to the north of the Duero River that belonged to the Order of the Knights Templar. As was their custom, they set up a hospital and hostel for weary travelers here. In the early thirteenth century, after an artist created the image of the Blessed Virgin, the town was able to compete for the massive traffic along the pilgrims' Road to Santiago. It was at that time that the Church of Santa Maria la Blanca was built, to honor this Virgin Mary and give her a grand space in which to work her miracles.

The star attraction outside is this double set of porticoed doors in the south facade, uniquely set against each other at a 90-degree angle. Although the archways are very similar in style, the leftmost door was made first as the grand entrance near the foot of the church, following Romanesque convention. The doors greet us with angels, priests, saints, and musicians. The way the figures are positioned within the arch tends toward Gothic, as is the slight point at the top. In the fourteenth century, the Chapel of Santiago was added to the transept area, and the rightmost door is a direct entry into that chapel.

Over the leftmost archway, there's a lovely double late-Romanesque frieze. On top, we have a Christ in Majesty with the symbols of the Gospel writers ("tetramorphos," they're called) and then what were intended to be the twelve apostles spreading out on either side. On the left, two apostles extend into the next wall, while on the right, two apostles are missing. They likely existed for about a hundred years, and were removed when the new wall for the Santiago Chapel was built. Below, there's a lovely Epiphany scene, with the Virgin and Child in the center and the Magi to the left. To the right, Joseph stands in the first archway, and the final two contain the angel Gabriel making the Annunciation, and the Virgin Mary receiving the news with an appropriate degree of surprise mixed with surrender implied in her hand gesture.

Note the painted column capitals! 

As I've hinted above, the construction is Romanesque-Gothic transition, so although it's built like a fortified structure with few windows, it's also voluminous. When you walk in, the whole space is illuminated through the rose window in the Santiago Chapel, and you can't help but look up at the pointed arches undulating through the upper space. 

Coming back outside for a moment, the strangely plain western facade has a story that needs to be told. When it was first built, it had a magnificent Romanesque-Gothic transition doorway known as the Puerta del Ángel. It probably had hundreds of sculptures on it. We don't get to enjoy that door today because it fell as a result of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. The current facade was built in 1888. The white statues on top were taken from the rubble of the Puerta del Ángel.

Figures and heads from the fallen door are indeed found within the church...

... and in other buildings. These thirteenth-century kingly faces are set into the facade of the nineteenth-century town hall.

Knowledge of these construction events and interventions is necessary to understand the unexpected question I had to deal with on this auspicious day:

Which Virgin? 

My objective in going to Villalcázar de Sirga was, of course, to see the image of the Virgin Mary that figures so prominently in the Cantigas de Santa Maria. But it wasn't as simple as walking into the church and meeting this artifact that was once in the presence of Alfonso X, el Sabio, earning his kingly admiration. This meeting required no little research and reasoning, because in this singular church, there is more than one thirteenth-century image of the Blessed Virgin.

Most tour guides take for granted that the above pictured is the Virgin of the Cantigas. She certainly has the look: early Gothic symmetry and a placid expression dominate the symbols of this lady's important role in Heaven and on Earth, and the colors that emphasize her beauty are nothing if not Alfonsine. It was so widely accepted in the nineteenth century that this is the Virgin who worked the medieval miracles that she was placed in the Santiago Chapel to watch over the magnificent thirteenth-century tombs of none other than Prince Felipe, the younger brother of King Alfonso X, and his second wife.

However, reputable art sites and references admit that this might not be that Virgin after all. This Virgin is stone, which isn't the customary material for a devotional image of the thirteenth century. I mentioned that she was moved to the Santiago Chapel--from where? From the Puerta del Ángel. During the time of Alfonso X, this Blessed Mother was outside the church, possibly hanging over people's heads as they came through the door. None of the cantigas in her honor talk about stopping to pay respects outside the church. On the contrary, they mention going inside the church to an altar to pray or hear mass or even sleep. None of these activities has the remotest chance of taking place in the doorway. To me, this means that this stone Virgin, even as Alfonsine as she appears, cannot possibly be the Virgin of the Cantigas.

As you can see, as we entered the church, we studied the beauty of the Santiago Chapel and I had my picture taken with the likely spurious Virgin. But I was only too pleased to settle into a pew and listen to mass because from there, I could unabashedly stare at the thirteenth-century Virgin Mary in the center of the main altarpiece. This, I believe, is the real deal, the beautifully sculpted Mother of God that moved a king so deeply, he had fourteen songs written about her.

She's similar in style and symbolism to the Santiago Chapel Virgin and just as symmetrical and placid, but she's made of wood. She was always an indoor Mary. For this reason, she still has her right hand and Baby Jesus still has his head. She's now surrounded by a magnificent fifteenth-century Hispano-Flemish series of panels depicting the life of Jesus.

We listened to the whole mass, and the sermon appropriately focused on the way Mary saved the day by noticing that they were running out of wine at the wedding at Cana. Mary had a talent for staying on top of the details when no one else would, said the priest. Every one of us has a special God-given talent, and we must do our duty and let it shine. I felt a tremendous sense of abundance and joy as I considered how to make my talents matter in the world.

During the part of the mass when the congregation gives each other "God's peace," the priest came into the aisle and shook everyone's hand and even chatted a little before returning to his post to finish. This is the first time I've seen such a warm and welcoming act. It felt like a sign of cosmic approval for the decisions I've made up to this point.

Romanesque fantastic creatures, but the execution is Gothic 

When the mass was over, I scurried into all four corners of the church, awed by the art and architecture and snapping photos. My friend stood with the priest at the door even after they'd turned off the lights, and explained that I've studied the Cantigas and was thrilled to be in Villalcázar de Sirga at long last. The priest was flattered by our interest and let me hang out a little longer than he would have if my friend hadn't mentioned my lifelong devotion.

Peter with the keys to the pearly gates 

When I joined them at the door, the priest explained to me that no one was really sure which Virgin is she of the Cantigas. Given my foreign looks--and probably my pesky accent doesn't help--I often get "Spainsplained." "I have my doubts about that, too," I said cheerily.

You can get a sense of the grand scale looking toward the foot. 

It was still early to think about having lunch after we gave our sincere thanks and bid the priest and the Virgin farewell, so we stopped in Las Cantigas, where the whole town had gathered. In among the townsfolk were people with the enormous backpacks and walking gear that are the giveaways of pilgrims, and we wondered why they had come all that way and not gone inside the church. Possibly they believed the website and thought the church was open after siesta for visits. Before we left, the priest came into the pub to continue his friendly duty.

The stone Virgin is dwarfed in the light from
the rose window.  

When I returned home, I told my roommate about the important things I'd accomplished that very day. I'd left home two days before, too ill to walk to the bus station. I returned aglow with inspiration and wellness. "Now that I've done this, I think I'm good for the rest of my life," I told my roommate.

"I can tell!" he said.

Just one more miracle from Villalcázar de Sirga.

Villalcázar de Sirga: The Miracles

Yours truly with the grand Gothic door and rose window
at Villalcázar de Sirga
Photos in this post 2019 Jessica Knauss 

As many readers of this blog know, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the Cantigas de Santa Maria because they are so inexhaustibly wonderful. Sometimes I don't think about them for a while, but they're always available for another round of fascination.

One reason I keep going back is that the stories they tell are so uplifting. There isn't a single sad ending in the entire set of more than 400 songs. (There are a few questionable ones at first blush, but if a modern reader thinks about them a little, s/he can come away with a message about the power of belief at the very least.)

A monumental pilgrim contemplates the western facade of Villalcázar de Sirga. 

Imagine the happiness boost I got recently when I visited one of the sanctuaries most often mentioned in the Cantigas.

The town of Villalcázar de Sirga in Palencia is "two leagues" from Carrión de los Condes, an important stop on the pilgrims' Road to Santiago de Compostela. This route culminates at the end of the known world, Galicia, where the remains of St. James the Apostle were miraculously discovered in the ninth century. The pilgrimage enjoyed enormous popularity for centuries and established a bustling hospitality economy. Shrines close to but not directly on the Road had a vested interest in capturing the attention of so many travelers, and nothing pulled them in like a good miracle--or fourteen. That's right, the Virgin of Villalcázar de Sirga (known as Villasirga at the time of the Cantigas) was a great miracle worker, and the cantigas poets and musicians recorded fourteen of them for posterity, and to get word out about this church so close to the pilgrimage route and attract at least a few of the faithful.

The town pub is called "Las Cantigas"! 

Cantiga 31: A farmer loses his cow. He's already had others killed or maimed by wolves, so he prays to the Virgin Mary, promising her the calf the cow is carrying if only the cow comes home. Of course, it does, and promptly gives birth to a healthy calf. The calf is so wonderful, in fact, that the farmer decides not to donate him to the Church, taking him with many other animals to sell in Villasirga. When the farmer tries to sell him, the calf runs away, straight into Mary's church, where he stops in reverence before Mary's altar. The calf eats with the other oxen donated to the church and becomes the church's best working ox, without ever needing to be prodded or beaten. The farmer, accepting the miracle, tells everyone he knows.

Cantiga 217: A powerful count from France arrives in Villasirga while on pilgrimage to Santiago. He has ten knights with him, and wants to enter the church before them. No matter what he does, he can't move past the threshold and set foot inside the church. His men push him so hard that blood gushes from his mouth. There is no going inside this church! The French count finally realizes what's wrong, and confesses his sins right there in the doorway. After that, he walks in effortlessly.

Cantiga 218: A German man who is "paralyzed" (in this case, probably quadriplegic), goes along on the Santiago pilgrimage with a group of people who aren't thrilled to have to deal with his special needs. Even though they make it all the way to Santiago, the German man's afflictions aren't cured. In fact, on the journey back, when they reach Villasirga, he also goes blind! Afraid he'll die and they'll be blamed, the other pilgrims abandon him inside the church. The German man prays in desperation to Holy Mary, and although St. James couldn't cure him, the Virgin of Villasirga does, right there and then. He can see and move about freely. The man returns to his lands to tell everyone about the wonderful miracle and also goes back to Villasirga to make votive offerings.

Cantiga 227: A squire who makes yearly pilgrimages to Villasirga is obliged to go to war in Sevilla, where he's taken captive. He prays to Mary every day for his release. When her feast day, August 2, rolls around, he's especially sad, and his captors ask him what's wrong. When he tells them he wishes he could be in Villasirga for the feast day, they beat him all over and throw him into an even worse dungeon. Mary appears to the squire and breaks his chains. The captors don't hear any activity, and they don't see him walk out of the prison. When he arrives in Villasirga, he hangs his broken chains at the church as a testament to the miracle granted him.

Cantiga 229: Moorish soldiers sent by the King of León invade Villasirga, and the Christians of the area flee in terror. The Moors enter the unprotected church and try to tear it down and burn it, but there's no way. Holy Mary makes them lose the strength in their limbs and go blind. In the end, they have to be carried out of the church. The message is that the Virgin is more powerful than any of Castile's enemies and can take them on any day.

Soup tureens that have "Las Cantigas" painted on them!
They weren't for sale. Of course I asked! 

Cantiga 232: A knight from Treviño has the best goshawk in the kingdom, and one day while hunting, he loses it. He searches all day and never finds the prized raptor. He sends his men to look far and wide, but though they never stop searching, they don't find the goshawk for four months. The knight weeps so much he thinks he'll go mad, then has the brilliant idea to have a wax goshawk made. He takes the votive offering and places it on the altar in Villasirga, invoking the Virgin's great power in his prayers. He returns home, and when he opens the door, he sees the goshawk on the perch where it should always have been.

Cantiga 234: A deaf-mute boy is raised by Don Rodrigo, one of the king' noblemen. Rodrigo goes to Villasirga with the boy and has him sleep right in front of the altar. Rodrigo has a mass in honor of the Virgin sung in the morning. During the "secret," the boy's tongue loosens, and by the time mass is over, the boy speaks and hears perfectly.

Cantiga 243: Two of King Alfonso's falconers foolishly go hunting by themselves. Their falcons send the ducks they're hunting into a frozen stream. The falconers run to the ice to see where the ducks are and fall into the water. The ice covers them over! They call out to Mary for some time, and finally the ice dissolves and they get out of the stream, unharmed.

Cantiga 253: A Frenchman has committed such tremendous sins that his priest sets him a hefty penance: He must walk the pilgrims' Road to Santiago carrying a 24-pound iron staff big enough for all the other pilgrims to see. He makes it to Villasirga, and begs the Virgin's forgiveness, laying the heavy staff at the altar. When he finishes his prayer, the staff breaks in two, and the pieces cannot be moved from where they fall. (The Virgin is telling him he needn't continue with the penance because she forgives him already.)

Cantiga 268: Although she attempted to find a cure for her paralysis at many other shrines, a French woman doesn't get well until she comes to Villasirga. After offering candles and prayers, she can move about freely.

Cantiga 278: A blind French woman makes the pilgrimage to Santiago. Although she's not expecting it, in Villasirga she regains her sight. On the way home, she comes upon another blind pilgrim. She tells him not to bother going to Santiago. He'll be cured in Villasirga, without a doubt.

Cantiga 301: Although a man always fasts on Mary's high holidays in her honor, he has committed a serious crime, the sentence for which is death. In prison awaiting execution, he prays to Mary. In his dreams, she appears in his cell, breaks his chains and takes his hand. He wakes to find himself in front of the altar at Villasirga! People in the church witness his appearance as if out of thin air. Medieval teleportation, folks.

Cantiga 313: A ship sails into a terrible storm and everyone is in danger of losing their lives. They call out to all the saints, but the storm continues and gets fiercer. When a priest has everyone on board sing Salve Regina for the Virgin of Villasirga, a white dove appears, and the sea calms. The ship arrives safely in port in the morning.

A framed print of Cantiga 31's miniatures in the bar. 

Cantiga 355: A man is pursued relentlessly by a young woman he doesn't like at all. She follows him on his travels, asking constantly why they can't get married and why don't they make love just to try it out. When they stop at Villasirga, he donates the money for one of the stone blocks needed to build the church. This is an important investment, both financially and spiritually. A final rejection is the last straw for the young lady, and she accuses the man of rape in the spirit of bitter revenge. He's taken immediately to the gallows, but through a miracle of Mary's doing, the very stone block he's bought for the church appears under his feet, keeping him from strangling. He stands upon the block all night, and in the morning, everyone sees the miracle and lets him go.

(I don't love this last one with the false rape accusation, but I think it's the only one in the Cantigas, at least.)

As you can see, these happy miracles describe every level of society and include details the history books of the time would be hard pressed to include. The Virgin Mary, especially as expressed in her image at Villasirga, is the universal mother and thirteenth-century Spain's greatest hope for prosperity, happiness, health, and salvation.

In the next post: meet the lady herself!

The Forgotten Royal Pantheon: Oña

Oña
Photos in this post 2019 Jessica Knauss  

The area where my castle is, the Merindades, surprises again and again with its exceptional natural beauty and historical value. The same day we visited my castle, my friend and I returned to Burgos via Oña, a place of old glory I'd hardly ever heard about, in spite of how pertinent it turned out to be to my historical and novel-writing interests.

We pulled into a parking lot near the old train station and found a quaint place to have our midday meal before taking a personal guided tour--what a luxury! We got to ask questions about what interested us and look at all the wonders at our own pace. The drawback for this blog is that no photos were allowed. I haven't found anything usable online, either, so we'll have to make do with my exterior and cloister shots and your readerly imagination.

As I mentioned in my castle post, the Merindades area was the forge of the Castilian character, the ancestral home of modern Spain. Oña in particular was staggeringly important throughout the Middle Ages, and for that reason, it's a melting pot of architectural styles that is fun to study and untangle. 

As readers of Seven Noble Knights will know, before Castile was a kingdom, it was a semi-independent county of León, and history honors four Counts of Castile. The third such count, Sancho García (the son of Count García of Seven Noble Knights fame) established the double monastery (both monks and nuns) at Oña in 1011 so that his daughter, Tigridia, could be the abbess. The area was particularly strategic in holding the Castilian border against half-amicable Navarrese encroachment. In 1033 it became a monks-only monastery under the Benedictine rule, and enjoyed prosperity and kept the most records of any medieval monastery in northern Spain until the State seized all Church property to balance the budget. Oña was sold off in two parcels in 1836. The area with the monks' dorms and living areas, library, and fish hatchery has since then been used as a Jesuit school, but now stands empty. We were only able to visit the sanctuary and cloister. 

Looking down on the Plaza Mayor of Oña from the monastery 

Our guide waits for the right moment to start our tour. 

The bell gable was the last element to be added, in the nineteenth century,
after the Romanesque tower fell.  

The gate was part of a defensive city wall

erected in the fourteenth century. The statuettes 

are portraits of the royals buried inside. 

Tigridia became a saint during her time here as abbess. We admired a Baroque altar with her casket, then a recently revealed lineal Gothic mural depicting the entire life of St. Mary the Egyptian, a stunning Romanesque-Gothic transition Crucifixion surrounded by a gorgeous Flemish-Spanish fifteenth-century altar, and two Romanesque capitals up so high I couldn't tell what they represented, complete with original paint. I won't complain anymore about high-up Romanesque capitals because I'm taking a course in Romanesque symbolism. Now I know that height was just as important to Romanesque artists for looking up toward God as it was for Gothic artists. They just went about it in diametrically different ways.

The statuettes make the pantheon the first aspect the visitor encounters at the monastery. 

Another important resident here was Fray Pedro Ponce de León. He arrived in 1536 and took on the education of two noble children who had been deaf from birth. He is credited with creating the precursor of sign language.

The door is Romanesque-Gothic transition, but the windows are fully Romanesque. 

After my friend and I admired a well-preserved Baroque organ and an extraordinary Gothic choir carved from walnut by the monks themselves, we got an eyeful of the main altar and the royal pantheon to either side of it.

The Gothic cloister 

The main altar consists of a tall, frothy Baroque tabernacle of gold curlicues surrounding the sixteenth-century gold, silver, and gemstone (probably glass pieces) casket of Saint Íñigo, one of  the first and strictest abbots of the monastery. My friend thought we could easily buy my castle with the gold and silver in the casket alone, and he may be right.

But the pantheon is where it's at. Oña was always a place of noble burials, and they think the entryway between the gate and the door may have served as the first cemetery. The remains were transferred to the Chapel of the Virgin by order of Sancho IV (son of Alfonso X) in 1285. By the late fifteenth century, even this was deemed inadequate, and the remains were moved to flank the main altar and new tombs constructed.

Tomb of a twelfth-century nobleman of La Bureba in the Gothic cloister 

The "new" royal tombs stand out because they aren't made of stone, but of walnut and boxwood. Their wooden tabernacles are smooth extensions of the Gothic traceries of the choir seating, and luxuriously carved and embossed tombs are surrounded by Flemish-Spanish paintings. On the left, four royal tombs, and on the right, four tombs of counts and other royals. The organization and setting give the impression of utmost respect if not adoration of these historical figures by the people who made the tombs. A sense of plenitude and perfection filled the area.

The Renaissance tomb of Bishop Pedro Gonzalez Manso (d. 1539) in the cloister
is backed with a Romanesque grille. 

On the royal side, we find the tomb of Sancho II, whose body was brought here personally by his devoted vassal, El Cid. This king was famously assassinated in Zamora in 1072. Next to Sancho II, we find Sancho III of Navarra (d. 1035), probably the most important and influential king of that small country. Next to Sancho III rests his wife and queen, Mayor. Finally, we contemplate the tomb of Prince García, son of Alfonso VII of Castile. The lad was studying at the monastery when he passed away at the age of 8.

Cloisters achieve a sense of upward pull by planting trees. 

The count side is full of people I want to write novels about. First, the third Count of Castile, Sancho García. As I mentioned, he's the son of Count García in Seven Noble Knights, and in 1002, Sancho defeated the mighty Almanzor (who also appears in Seven Noble Knights) at Calatañazor, as well as founding this monastery. Sancho will have a few important things to do in the sequel to Seven Noble Knights, if I ever get to write it! Next to him rests his wife, Countess Urraca.

Next to his mother lies Prince García, who was the fourth and last Count of Castile. His story is part of the foundation of the Kingdom of Castile, and I've been dreaming of writing a separate novel about him. I wish I could describe how much it meant to me to be in the presence of the tombs of the people whose stories I want so much to tell. 

The final tomb holds the remains of two of Sancho IV's children. 

The sacristy is a rococo museum with the biggest drawers I believe I will ever see for the monks to put their robes in without folding, and the inestimable treasure of the funeral robes of Sancho García. These consist of linen embroidered with silk and 21-karat gold threads in Muslim Córdoba nearly one hundred years before the count's death. This was the finest fabric money could buy a thousand years ago, and I have to say, modern machines can't do better. 

The chapter house had marvelous Romanesque archways with original paint and a display of column capitals I'm always willing to spend a few minutes with. 

After enjoying the Gothic cloister, we found a lovely book full of photos and history at the gift stand near the exit, only to find out that the author had been our tour guide! As we headed down the steps to the tourism office to get his authorial signature, I realized my watch wasn't attached to my wrist. It's not an expensive watch, but I bought it while I was studying in Salamanca, around the time I dreamed I had an artists' colony in a Spanish castle, and it's been with me every day for thirteen years. I marveled that I should lose such an item in this historical place. 

After our guide signed the book we'd just bought, he called the monastery and told my friend and me they would let us back in to look around. So we got two visits for the price of one! It was hard to look at the floor with so many medieval artistic wonders higher up. We felt strongly that we would've heard the watch hit the hard flooring throughout most of the complex. Only one place lacked the hard floor--the cloister, where the burbling fountain might also have impeded our noticing anything amiss. That's where we found it. The thirteen-year legacy of my Salamancan watch will continue, hopefully for another thirteen years or more. 

I had the clasp tightened at a watch repair store the next day. 

The Castle of My Dreams

Castle and proprietor. Count on it.
All photos in this post 2019 Jessica Knauss 

In January 2006, I was studying very hard in Salamanca. I was also getting to know the public face of Manolo Garcia as I'd never had the opportunity to before, and loving every new thing I learned, about both Alfonso X el Sabio and Manolo Garcia.

That month, thirteen years ago, I dreamed I lived in a large structure with many staircases and bedrooms. This wonderful dwelling was filled with ten or twelve writers and artists, focusing on their creations and feeling inspired by their distraction-free but gorgeous surroundings. One unassuming but popular guest was Manolo Garcia. He would give impromptu creativity talks in chambers where everyone sat on sumptuous pillows, but mostly he created, like all the other artists. He stopped me on a staircase to thank me for inviting him to my artistically stimulating refuge from the obligations of daily life, saying it had been the best month of his life.

Since then, I've known exactly what I will do with all the money I'll earn from bestselling books and unexpected inheritances. I'm inspired to run an artists' colony where writers and all kinds of creatives can practice their art unencumbered in a spectacular setting.

Fast forward ten years, ten of the best years of my life because they included my marriage to Stanley. Poking around on the internet one day in late 2015, I found a castle for sale. A Spanish castle for sale. The asking price was five million euros, which doesn't seem outlandish to fulfill one's cherished life dream, but was far out out of my prospects.

I showed the listing to my soul mate and he was happy to find out it's in the same region as Frías, a gorgeous medieval wonderland we'd recently seen and where he said many times (jokingly) that we should go and live. The region is called the Merindades, and it's the hardscrabble mountain birth mother of Castile, and thus of Spain as we know it.

Specifically, my castle is located in Lezana de Mena. It's next door to the place where the word "Castile" was written down for the first time (that we know of). The first written notice of the castle is from 1397, and it was built a few years before that for the Angulo family, one of the important landowners in the region. The construction is solid and finished with perfection in every angle. Aside from the tower, which is the only thing visible in my photos here, it has a wall and other towers and some usable one-story buildings. It sits on 22,000 square meters of gardens with fruit trees, a stream, a little forest with three century-old oaks, and a large pond. (Perfect for rhinoceros grazing, but we'll think about that later.)

The price, to me, is further justified because it boasts state-of-the-art central heating; a heated swimming pool with geothermal technology, a wave generator, and spa jets; all new plumbing; double-glazed windows; a centralized vacuum cleaning system; satellite telephone system with Wi-Fi, TV in all rooms, and motion detectors in communal areas; five open fireplaces, three of which have inserted cassettes with hot air impellers with insulated stainless steel flues; solid oak beams and stairways; floors made of oak, chestnut, and northern pine; six bed chambers with on-suite bathrooms, two with walk-in wardrobes; three powder rooms; a library; a large refectory; public rooms; a kitchen; and an elevator!

And now the asking price has been reduced to less than three million euros!

This first week of January 2019, I had the chance to visit my castle for the first time, so of course I seized it! Driving north from Burgos, my friend and I were aghast at the constantly changing countryside. Just looking through the window filled me with gratitude. "If you like Castile," said my friend, "it doesn't get any more authentic than this!"

Passing by innumerable Romanesque churches and other castles I don't currently have plans to buy, weaving through the mountains, we at last came around a bend and my castle presented itself to me like a gift from Spain, the entity I've loved longest and hardest. It was apparent that the castle wasn't open to visits from tourists (But I'm not a tourist! I'm the future owner!) before we even parked.

The town surprised me with its lively atmosphere. It lacked the sense of desolation you get in a lot of towns on the Castilian plain, and felt welcoming. We had tea in the bar across from what looked like the castle's front gate, while I was champing at the bit to get outside and take photos and commune with my castle. The lady who made our tea gave us the low-down: Indeed, no one is allowed in the castle unless they intend to put their visit in a high-visibility publication or have documented ability to buy it. Even so, I didn't feel turned away. I had a strong sense of being in the right place, which is something I haven't felt in my life very often.

The castle passed into the Velasco family in the early fifteenth century, a time full of conflicts between nobles and uprisings at all levels. The Velascos had countless castles all over what is now northern Castile, claiming their territory and warning against any and all transgressions of authority. Wouldn't it be ideal to have an invasion of writers and artists in this beautiful space to encourage the sense of peace that now blankets this valley? 

Generous donations graciously accepted, serious investment queries gladly entertained.