Siguero: Where Geometry Awakens the Traveler

Another of those striking period architectural gems that embody that metaphorical Jonathan Livingston Seagull, who, like Machado's complement or Ortega y Gasset's circumstance, always accompanies the traveler, igniting that evolutionary flame that is the desire for adventure, for progress, for always going one step further, is located near the Sierra de Ayllón: Siguero.

In Siguero, as in Perorrubio, the first thing the traveler sees upon approaching the town, while devouring the kilometers of that sometimes melancholic N-111 highway that connects Soria with Segovia—a journey well worth taking, as those interested in history and this type of artistic encounter will find their desire to see surprising places fulfilled—is another of those Romanesque churches. Perched atop a small hill and just a few meters from the road, it will tempt the traveler, preventing them from continuing their journey without first stopping and taking a look, an action that may take more or less time, depending on their level of reverie.

Dedicated to Saint Martin—not the one from Dumio, who, declaring war on the "veneratori lapidi" or "stone worshippers," destroyed countless monuments, especially those from the megalithic era—but the one from Tours, the one who shared his warrior's cloak with a poor man shivering with cold and withdrew to the eremitic life, disillusioned with the world, when the Church committed its first political crime by condemning and executing Priscillian for heresy—the true "Saint James" who rests in Compostela?—the Romanesque church of Siguero attracts precisely because of its humility, because of the purity of its sacred geometry, completely untouched by the insidious manipulation hidden in the excess of restrictive sculptures that characterize most churches of its style.

This apparent simplicity, however, conceals, as we have been saying, the secrets of a geometry that, incidentally, invites us to see its perfection with the eyes of the imagination. In this structure, which seems to break the mold of other temples in the area, we see a well-assembled construction, where circles, rectangles, stars, squares, and polygons form the essential elements of that universal and infinite language of Mathematics and Geometry.

In short: a place where it is worthwhile to pause for a few minutes and let oneself be carried away by the beauty hidden behind the seemingly simple.

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