In the bottom-left corner of the cathedral’s nave an old priest sat on a wooden chair with a shawl wrapped around his shoulders against the cold stones surrounding him.
It indeed felt rather bracing inside the Cathedral of Santander that Saturday morning to say the least. Spain’s northern Cantabria region had been enjoying milder temperatures compared to the UK—but they dipped just as I arrived on Friday afternoon.
The priest was waiting to hear Confession with what appeared admirable patience. There didn’t appear to be many takers. Other than an old lady sitting in front of the cathedral’s Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament off to one side, with its splendid ostensory tabernacle in gilded silver by the goldsmith Maese Calvo from Burgo and a painting by the Santander painter José Ramón Sánchez depicting the Disciples of Emmaus, a few tourists pottered around the chilly interior.
Santander’s Santa Iglesia Basílica Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción (Holy Church Basilica Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption) is a relatively simple affair compared to the more famous architectural giants that dominate Spanish cities. To be honest, Santander itself hasn’t got as much to write home about compared to other Spanish cities, especially this time of the year when its lovely beaches are rendered rather mute. Most of the city’s historic centre was destroyed by a great fire.
That said, I have a soft spot for the place. During Covid lockdowns, when I turned into a latter-day version of the Wandering Jew on a seemingly never-ending Camino, near the beginning, just as I was getting into my stride, I flew back to the UK from Santander for a minor ear operation that unexpectedly became available.
At the time, I was extremely torn about returning. Not only was it practically very inconvenient, the UK government, along with most other Western governments, had revealed how our democracies couldn’t actually stand up to a decent stress test. The prospect of an increasingly authoritarian-run country that closed down churches, mandated that people die alone and literally set about quashing the ability to fall in love was not enticing—being ex-military, suffice to say none of that was not what I fought for, nor what my colleagues died for.
On top of that, I had no idea whether I would make it back out to resume the Camino, or whether I’d get stuck by some new “travel rule”, permanently marooned in Lockdown Britain.
Thankfully, I made it back to Santander and got back on the Camino trail. So I see Santander as a crucial link in that strange Camino, as I tried, like others in those extraordinary circumstances, to “bodge together a life”, as Robert Macfarlane puts it in his book Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, when referring to the “tramps, the hobos, the vagrants, the dispossessed, the fugitives, the harmed and the jobless” that have populated the history of modern wayfaring.
As I wandered around the cathedral that chilly Saturday, suddenly the church bells began to strike, marking noon. I saw the priest stand up, as did the old lady in front of the chapel. He began to say the Angelus, his Spanish words making this old prayer sound even more melodic and mysterious to my soundly functioning—the NHS surgeon did a grand job—and foreign ears (these days the only other times I have heard the Angelus said is by those attending Catholic Herald pilgrimages, such as when we went to Fatima):
El Ángel del Señor anunció a María.
Y concibió del Espíritu Santo.
Ave María…
The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary,
And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.
Hail Mary…
The short prayer completed, the priest sat down to resume his chilly wait. The old lady resumed her seated position. Inscribed on the chapel alter were the words from John 11.28: El Maestro está aquí y te llama (“The Master is here and calls you”).
I wandered into the tranquil cloister next door, and after a loop, left the cathedral’s grounds and headed to a nearby café for a coffee. As I re-entered the bustling world, I can’t deny that the old priest’s actions and devotion had made an impression. After all, it only takes one person to make a difference, to vocalise a ray of light amid the darkness.
There was a time, when all across Europe and, yes, even in the UK, innumerable monasteries, convents and churches acted as what you could call dedicated “prayer centres”: their inhabitants, all those monks, nuns and priests, collectively forging a dynamic of prayer said on the world’s behalf whose power we can never fully know or understand.
It still happens, of course, but on a much-diminished scale, especially in the West—illustrated on my long Camino as I continually passed old monasteries and convents now closed down, or converted to high-end hotels. Looking around at the world and at the state of our societies, it’s hard not to conclude that there has, as a result, been a corresponding loss that, if not directly influenced by, has at least coincided with a decrease in those locations praying for people and the world. Enough of a coincidence to make one ponder, shall we say.
When I landed in Santander this time around, as I inhaled the fresh sea air, it smelled like…you know: that smell, to paraphrase Colonel Kilgore from the film Apocalypse Now; it smelled like…freedom—a reaction I implicitly have whenever I re-encounter a location from that pandemic Camino (and in which were sown the seeds of the Catholic Herald’s future Camino adventure(s). Especially when coming to Santander coming from London, which while not officially locked down anymore, increasingly seems set to a default position that restricts freedom of movement and human flourishing.
I don’t think the current situation is helped by the fact that when it comes to addressing the Sins of the State during the pandemic, absent anything like the Sacrament of Confession, the means available to the government—the ongoing UK Covid Inquiry—appear entirely ineffective and will expurgate nothing of meaning, and generate no meaningful reckoning. The sins and knowledge of them will linger on in the national conscience, thereby festering as such sins will do when tried to be pushed aside or ignored but remaining still there.
Similarly, something about that priest patiently ready to offer Confession against the odds—based on “the numbers” that day—while engaging in an increasingly arcane and out-of-fashion prayer practise seemed to speak of a rareified liberty that is both uplifting and transcendent, even when just witnessed, but also even more under threat now.
These days, fewer and fewer people are either praying or walking as much as people used to: activities that are innate to humans endowed with consciousness. As we pray and walk less, it doesn’t seem to be doing us much good.
Photo: View of the Gothic Cathedral of Santander, Spain, 27 September 2015. (Photo credit: tichr; iStock by Getty Images.)
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