The Seminary of Villalba de la Sierra, the Ventano del Diablo and the Enchanted City of Cuenca

Villalba de la Sierra, is a town that is located, approximately, a score of kilometers from the capital of Cuenca, being able to add that its passage is little less than obligatory for all those who have the intention of going towards those two great landmarks of magic natural, that are the Enchanted City and the birth of the Cuervo River.

In fact, it is precisely from here, when the landscape ceases to be sovereignly solano, somewhat monotonous and linear default, to transform into Gothic extravaganza, where two matchless stonemasons - erosion and a river populated by a multitude of legends about nymphs and targets, the Júcar-they agreed, millennia ago, to elaborate in silence, without haste but without pause - as all good craftsmanship requires - a fantastic world in which ravines, cliffs and singular gorges resemble, metaphorically and comparatively speaking, temples and natural cathedrals, where you can still breathe, as soon as the smell is put on guard, the intoxicating fragrance of infinity of incenses that spread through the environment in honor of Mater Gaia.

It is also, at the exit of Villalba, where one unexpectedly encounters a Romanesque mirage, whose appearance as a girl with 'the face just washed' - as the singing would say, not of course the song of Solomon, because The child of this one was already sufficiently clear that the sun had toasted her, as our brunette and endearing 'rianxeira galega', to mention one of the many examples of Spain 'previous to'- makes her doubt about a paternity or denomination of medieval origin, vintages of the XII or XIII century and elaborated with the best arts of the sacred geometry of the time; namely, among many others: sobriety, temperance and balance.

Difficult it is, in addition, to leave behind the place and ask if behind the name -Villa Blanca or Villa Alba- the miraculous ghost of some ancestral Lady Albina, many of whose ancient sanctuaries were located in wild places but beautiful and difficult to access, like that famous Asturian sanctuary located in the mountains of Quirós -of the Quirós, references are those maxims that say, roughly, that "before God, the Quirós" or that old song by Victor Manuel, entitled precisely like this, "the Quirosanu ', with which the girl on duty did not want to dance, for fear that with her' madreñes could mancar'- by roads where the shepherds of the Neolithic danced to the sound of drums by cliffs and gorges of vertigo.

A similar vertigo, we can find just a kilometer ahead, in the viewpoint known as Ventano del Diablo -though, the diabolic window to which it refers, is lodged in the depths of the depression and has a shape similar to the curious formations they have made the Lucena de las Catedrales beach famous- from where you can enjoy a beautiful panoramic view, although the Júcar scarcely looks like a snake that lets glimpse the silver of its scales among the dense pine needles.
Invariable, in its magnificent aggressiveness, the road continues to rise, safeguarding mountains and gorges by curves that in some sections -something of exaggeration comes and goes, let's be serious- seem to close on themselves, forming that 'ouroboros' or perfect zero with the one who in the Middle Ages represented God.

Whether it was precisely the hand of God or the Goddess who modeled the primitive clay of these payments imbued with the fecund dream of a phenomenon known as 'paraidolia', really matters little.

It matters, of course, the effect - or better, the impact, sudden or prolonged - that such forms produce in each one, since it would not be unreasonable to suppose that the spirit, or the soul or perhaps - a blow of Newton in the head, ignite the light - those twelve grams that the doctor misses when brain death occurs and confirms the kick-off to sign the death certificate, was like a chameleon that instead of absorbing the colors to camouflage with the medium, absorbed forms and process them in a totally personal way that may or may not coincide with the official assessments that guides like to develop in concert circuits.

Based on this, I could say - and, by the way, recommend the solo experience - that what impressed me most about that Enchanted City, were not those supposed lovers of rocky Teruel - to whom one must search and look for the right perspective to find something similar to two lips covering each other to offer the tenderness of a kiss, even if, as the Sinuhe the Egyptian of Mika Waltari would say, so that "two lonely lie in a cold night for friendship"; or those ships anchored in a meadow, whose stern resembles that other vessel from which Captain Hook directed the activities of his pirate crew, while peeping through the window looking for signs of the terrible crocodile that chased him like a shadow, threatening to devour him whole; or even those curious formations, similar to an egg hatched from the amazing alien creature that made such a bad time to 'the girl with the white panties' - the actress Sigourny Weaber - in the movie 'Alien, the eighth passenger'.

No, what impressed me the most was that impressive and unexpected calcareous formation that is called 'sea of stone'. And he did, to the point that even today, after the time, I continue to wonder what giant worked there; How were the sandals of the fisherman who threw his nets in him, when just God began to load the dice to achieve a universal play ?.
Anyway, those things that you think and you find yourself wandering around the Camino.