Another early start, going north up the A7 autovia to rendezvous at a service station outside Puerto Lumbrera with David and Cath for a trip into the hinterland of Murcia. We drove up to Lorca, then turned north west, heading for Totana, although we weren't headed for the town itself, but for the Sanctuary of St Eulalia in the foothills of the Sierra Espuña. Saint Who? You may be wondering.
Eulalia was a young teenage girl of the Barcelona region, who was killed for her faith in 303 AD during the persecutions of Diocletian, like St Agnes and St Cecilia in Rome, and St Agatha in Sicily. Devotion to her memory spread through Spain, especially in Murcia, where she became the patron Saint of the town of Totana in the middle ages. A monastic sanctuary was established in her honour in 1574, and has been a place of pilgrimage since then.
Before visiting the sanctuary, we drove up above the village of Aledo, perched along the edge of an escarpment overlooking the Valle Guadalentín to a hilltop hosting a ten metre tall image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, looking east across the plain towards the sea 50km away. From here there are wonderful views in every direction, including the monastery in the valley below. At night, the statue is illuminated and visible from the A7 autovia, 20km away, if you know where to look.
From the mountain top we descended to the monastery in the valley. No monks there these days. Not enough to go around! The sixteenth century building hospitality complex can house scores of visitors in a range of appropriate accommodations adapted for twentieth century use. The extensive grounds are laid out with trees that provide shade for many visitors. There was just a school party of a few dozen there when we arrived. I imagine it gets much busier when inhabitants of Totana and the wider region arrive at fiesta times.
The nave walls of the sanctuary church are decorated with 17th century frescos illustrating Gospel stories of the life of Christ, and a few of his saints. Their style and colour are characteristically early counter reformation Spanish, somehow managing to appear sober and vivid at the same time. The roof timbers reflect Mudéjar style carpentry and construction, and there's a small organ in the seventeenth century style, though whether it's a restored original or a more recent imitation is impossible to tell from a distance. The whole has been faithfully and superbly restored. It's a hidden treasure, well worth a visit for anyone who wants to get an impression of how a western church may have looked in the days when didactic visual art was the norm for catechesis.
From here, we drove high up on narrow winding roads into the pine forests of the Sierra Espuña, up to the 1,200m mark where the source of the rio Espuña is to be found for those willing to walk and find it. The summit is another 300m higher up. From here we descended to the visitor centre, which turned out to be quite a revelation, dedicated in honour of Ricardo Cordoníu, a 19th century man born in Cartagena in 1846, who was an early pioneer in environmental conservation, known as 'El Apostol de Arbol'. Early on in his engineering career, he saw the relationship between catastrophic autumnal flooding and deforestation, and devoted the rest of his life to the replacement of trees all over the hills and valleys of the Sierra Espuña, right up to where the tree line once was.
Centuries of increasing timber harvesting without replacement had destroyed a balanced natural environment and its ancient ecosystems. As a result of twenty years effort, the upper slopes and valleys of the Sierra Espuña were restored, along with its extraordinary bio-diversity. The entire area is now a unique designated regional national park. It was just wonderful to pass through forests of Mediterranean pine and oak, set against the diverse colouration of soil and rocks, and amazing to think that all this rich landscape could have remained barren and unstable, if it were not for the insight, determination and leadership of one local nature loving man.
We had lunch on the terrace in a small village restaurant at El Berro la Parra, where I had sopa de mariscos and emperador, for me a royal treat. Then we drove out of the Nature Reserve, and headed north and then west to Caravaca del la Cruz, our final destination of the day. It's an town which dates back more than a millennium, whose significance rests on a story about the conversion of a Moorish prince through a heavenly revelation of the cross, during a celebration of Mass, centuries before the reconquista. Subsequently, the town acquired a relic of the True Cross and became a reputed place of pilgrimage, identified by the unique iconographic symbolism of the cross, similar to the cross of La Lorraine, which pilgrims take away as a souvenir.
The sanctuary of the True Cross is a 16th century church within the precincts of the eleventh century moorish castle on the promontory overlooking the town. It's one of five places in the world where the Catholic celebration of Jubilee is observed once every seven years instead of every forty nine years - 2017 happens to be a Jubilee year, so the town and castle are decked in festive attire. In the church a recording of the recitation of the rosary runs continuously. The cloister has a canopy to shelter several hundred white garden chairs, for the use of overflow congregations on big fiestas, and in a corner of the castle courtyard are stacks of hundreds of chairs, retained, just in case. It's a place geared up to welcome visitors to worship on festival days, in an impressive way.
As the sun began to set, we made our way back down to Lorca, and then along the A7 to Puerto Lumbrera for me to get my car, and drive the last three quarters of an hour back to Mojácar. It was a long day's travel, but so worthwhile, discovering the remarkably green face of the neighbouring Murcia Province. There's so much more to see that's different! My photos are here
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