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23/05/2008

The author Julio Llamazares presents his latest book ‘Las rosas de piedra’ at the Cathedral of Santa María

Next Wednesday, Llamazares will visit the restoration work at the Cathedral of Santa María in Vitoria-Gasteiz and give a conference in the Cathedral portico at 8 p.m.

Vitoria-Gasteiz, 23rd May 2008.- The author Julio Llamazares will be presenting his latest book in Vitoria next Wednesday. ‘Las rosas de piedra’ is an unprecedented journey around Spain through its cathedrals, including Vitoria’s Gothic monument. He will be giving a talk in the Cathedral’s portico at 8 p.m. as part of the “Encounters with the Cathedral” programme organised by the Santa María Cathedral Foundation. Free entry until capacity reached.
“This is a journey through time and geography (...) I set out as the third millennium was starting and one day I hope to reach the end, having travelled to all the cathedrals in this country”, says Julio Llamazares at the start of the first volume of Las Rosas de Piedra, which covers the cathedrals in the northern half of Spain, and which he hopes to complete with the second volume he is currently working on.
In the case of the Cathedral of Santa María in Vitoria, we see the traveller inquiring about “the interminable work being carried out in Vitoria’s Cathedral, the restoration programme worth 5 billion. It is a sign of the times when those who complain the most are those who receive the most”, says the author, who particularly emphasised the political push coming from the people, which highlights the differential nature of this phenomenon.
True to his idea of Spain, Llamazares makes six journeys, pointing out his own sentimental frontiers, because the narrator-traveller does not believe “in other frontiers dictated by taste”.
His first journey takes him to Galicia. Santiago, Tuy, Orense and Lugo precede his incursion into the once powerful diocese of Mondoñedo, where a cloaked feudalism still remains, inspired by the traditional spirit of Galicia. In The Lost Kingdom (El reino perdido) that linked Asturias and León, he finds the cathedrals of Oviedo, León with its sickly stone, Astorga, Zamora, the two cathedrals in Salamanca and one in Ciudad Rodrigo, which is apparently the smallest bishopric in Spain.
The Site of Old Castile (Donde la vieja Castilla) is the chapter dedicated to the cathedral of Santander that was destroyed by fire, moving on to the filigree work of Burgos, and the cathedrals of Valladolid and Ávila before arriving at the three Basque capitals, then Pamplona, Calahorra and discovering the story of the cockerel and hen who live in the cathedral of Santo Domingo de la Calzada, in La Rioja. Aragon from north to south (Aragón de norte a sur) sparks strong memories for the traveller, and from the pearl of the Pyrenees, in Jaca, he travels to the poverty of Albarracín’s Cathedral, passing through the overwhelming Cathedral of El Pilar, a kind of smaller-scale Vatican; Aragon makes him recall the liturgies he practiced as a child. The volume draws to a close with the Cathedrals of Catalonia (Las seos de Cataluña), taking him to Lérida, Barcelona, Gerona and San Feliu de Llobregat, among others.