May 30 2012
The Museum, the road rally and the sun

The sun breaks out in the afternoon, and with it come the tour groups: lots of pilgrims from Ireland, just in from Tipperary, groups accompanied by a priest or priests. At this time of the year Irish pilgrims come en masse, and flights back and forth fill up months in advance. I am certain to be flying to Dublin with a planeload of pilgrims, priests and nuns.

I pass the time in the room taking care of details of tomorrow's departure, then walk over to the Cathedral Museum at the side of the main facade. As I have been on a pilgrimage, I pay 3 Euros, instead of 5. The museum has been modernized since I was here last: it now features camera-driven glass doors that open automatically, leading to an area displaying archaeological finds, as well as damaged sections of the Romanesque parts of the Cathedral, preserved. The signal piece is the Choir of the Romanesque church, which has been painstakingly rebuilt using reconstituted pieces of the missing segments. This labor of the workshop of Maestro Mateo, who was charged with completing the works begun earlier and bringing the Cathedral to completion and dedication on April 21, 1211, includes heads of holy figures, each individualized, carved above the Choir seats. The Compostelan Romanesque is known for its playfulness: saints smile, animals have funny expressions. The woman who had to kiss her lover's head twice a day after his beheading, is part of the winding decoration of what was once one of the Cathederal's supporting columns.

The Museum is part of the Cathedral, so it is possible to visit the Cathedral cloister. Not home to any religious order, it is simply an interior courtyard to the side of which lie the changing rooms for the priests. The Treasury reveals the Cathedral's treasures: bejeweled monstrances, carvings in ivory, bas reliefs known as cornucopias:
religious scenes elaborately hammered in silver and adorned with silver flowers and leaves.

The library holds, along with its many rare books, the original of the botafumeiro. On the topmost floor there is an exterior gallery that looks out on the square and offers a wonderful view Santiago's roofs and the countryside beyond. Although, in another example of the challenge to the spiritual world posed by the material, half of the Praza del Obradoiro is full of classic cars --a Rolls Royce, a Stutz Bearcat, and others. A road rally from Gijon to Bayonne is taking place, and stopping in Santiago: the only square large enough to park all the participants' cars for the night is the Cathedral's.

The tapestry rooms are on the other side of the exterior gallery. The tapestries, Flemish and Spanish, were the 1811 gift of Don Pedro de Acuna (tilde) y Malvar, Canon of the Cathedral. The tapestries from Flanders feature mythological scenes of heroic proportions. but perhaps more significant artistically are a number of panels for which Goya drew the cartoons. These were woven at the Royal Workshop and the Workshop of Santa Barbara. Shown with Goya's written descriptions of the subject of his cartoons --which can be seen at the Prado in Madrid-- they remind us that Goya's eye rejected nothing, that it was catholic in its reach, capturing daily life around him unflinchingly. One panel depicts a gypsy woman walking with her inamorato, who takes umbrage at the proffer of a flower from a seated man. Another takes in guileless boys playing at soldier. Another depicts rough and ready men, armed with pistols, protecting a cache of tobacco from bandits. Goya looks life straight in the face and finds it beautiful in all its messy glory. That is why he is the most Spanish of all painters, the closest to the life of his times as it was lived at all levels of society.


My tour of the museum over, I ask the guard if there is not another section to see. If I make a reservation, I can use my museum ticket to obtain a discount to see Archbishop Gelmirez' palace attached to the Cathedral. To do so I have pass the central stairs of the Praza de Obradoiro next to it, mount the stairs to the Palace door. The young woman at the entrance tells me that I can come tomorrow at a few minutes of eleven a.m. and be admitted. The end of the visit includes a trip to the topmost parts of the towers of the Cathedral, which should be something to see.

If I can I will get to the Cathedral in time to hear lauds, the mid-morning chant, which is sung, and then go over to the Gelmirez palace. That should give me enough time to wrap up packing and leave for the airport by 2:00 p.m., in more than enough time to complete the check-in for the 4:20 p.m. flight to Dublin. The visit will be my farewell to Santiago.