A jewel in the crown, called Ejea de los Caballeros

The traveler bids farewell, provisionally, to that splendid adventure that always entails a cultural tour of a region of Aragon, neighboring Navarre, which, in his opinion, never leaves anyone indifferent: the Five Villages.

And he does so, as could not be otherwise, allowing himself to be carried away by the charm of one of the capitals, which, without the seductive picturesqueness of other nearby and equally monumental settlements, such as Sos del Rey Católico and Uncastillo, nevertheless preserves the seductive charm of its ancient Jewish quarter and that jewel in the crown, a must-see for any lover of Romanesque architecture, which, of course, is the formidable Church of Saint Savior.

A church whose north portal, in itself, despite the modern siege that protects it, among other things, from the elements, is already worth the privilege of facing the four hundred kilometers that separate it from Madrid.

Considering that the legendary king Alfonso I the Battler also traveled here on crusade, bewitched by the allure of the Military Orders, and especially the Order of the Temple, the traveler cannot help but speculate on the mysterious "of the Knights" that accompanies the name of Ejea, the ancient Egessa of the Visigoths, and think of those skilled settlers, who, after all, were also Templars.

But, hypothesis aside, he soon forgets such speculations when, standing in front of the monumental doorway of this fortress-church of Saint Savior, his emotions overflow as he realizes that his eyes are devouring, with ill-contained greed, what is perhaps the masterpiece of a Master, that of Agüero, also known as San Juan de la Peña, whose trail he has been following for years, in places as diverse as Jaca, Huesca, and Navarre, knowing that he was particularly active in this multicultural land, which, to all intents and purposes, is the Five Villages.

It is impossible, faced with such a display of imagination, not to think that, like Dante in the middle of his life, he too is about to begin a prodigious journey, less vital than that undertaken by the sublime Italian poet and without the providential guidance of Virgil and Beatrice, but intense enough to test his perspicacity and powers of observation.

Thus, like the different circles in which Dante defined Purgatory, Hell, and Paradise, the traveler, camera in hand and ideas boiling in his head like water in a pressure cooker, embarks on the sovereign adventure of participating in the beauty of a symbolic world, which, as he well knows, was undoubtedly one of the bedside books of the countless generations of illiterate people who preceded him, for whom, nevertheless, the power and force of the symbol, combined with intentional graphics that had little or nothing to envy of modern comics, were sufficiently relevant for its message to reach them, with the force of a revelation, that universe shrouded in shadows, which, through C. G. Jung, is the Collective Unconscious.

With a cover like this, the traveler also thinks that there is no need to have the New Testament at hand, because, as one can see, embracing the naive irony of medieval stonemasons, its main passages are visible, offering, to anyone who stops to look at them, a message that still remains intact, in this 21st century, where even the mysteries of the Universe, or at least some of them, are beginning to be revealed to us.

Among them, we once again encounter another recurring theme in Romanesque sculpture in the area, the seductive story of those mysterious Three Wise Men who, from some enigmatic place in the East—Zoroaster's Persia, the Kingdom of Prester John, Agartha, Shamballa, or the hidden caves of Mount Kailash—came to that tiny dot on the map, Bethlehem, following an equally mysterious star to worship the One for whom Saint John the Baptist himself, before his fateful encounter with Salome, had to diminish so that the latter might increase.

Perhaps, the traveler wonders, curiously moved by the thought of John's head served on a silver platter, is it Salomé herself, that significant dancer for whom the Master of Agüero seemed to have a special predilection and who, unlike other portals and capitals, such as those he has already had the opportunity to see in the temples of El Frago or the nearby town of Biota, here, on this spectacular north portal of the Church of Saint Savior, appears in numerous representations, which, of course, cannot be the work of a random coincidence?.

Remember, while still trying to pay attention to the hundreds of details that make it a visual spectacle, that all the great masters of antiquity were accompanied by a mysterious female who, like Salvador Dalí's Gala, also secretly pulled the strings of their public persona, maintaining a complementarity, very similar, perhaps, to that which led a great poet like Antonio Machado to affirm that he was at peace with men, but at war with his innermost being.

Who knows, the traveler wonders, walking away with a numb neck and his camera demanding unconditional surrender, what the motives were that led the enigmatic Master of Agüero to make his ballerina one of the greatest archetypes of Romanesque sculpture in Spain.

But he does know that, whatever those motives, the mere sight of her still continues to suggest a fascinating universe of possibilities and a complete challenge to the imagination.

NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property and are therefore subject to my Copyright.