A LIVING CHURCH IN A DEAD TOWN - Miguel Angel Paez, Avanzado 1
This is the picture of a living church in a dead town. It is alive because at first glance it does not look very different from any other town’s church, but we could say that it is hurt or disabled somehow. If we look at its sad and elongated dark eyes, formed by the hollows where the bells are placed, the right eye from the spectator point of view is empty. Its eyeball is missing, it has no bell. Apart from this fact, it is complete, it breathes, although it shows its age, its wrinkles, its tiredness, and the many years enduring the lashes of severe winters in the Pyrenees landscape.
It is a Romanesque Mozarabic church, typical of the Pyrenees of Huesca region with a nave and a semicircular apse in very good condition. It stands in the middle of a ghost and abandoned village, called Otal.
At the bottom left of the apse, we can see something strange, something like a rectangular window which does not match the original built, as a patch out of place, as an alien. It is a niche, which was built years later to house deceased people in the apse guts and which gives it a more gloomy aspect –death embedded in the wounded church walls–.
The human figure walking towards the church provides life to the defunct picture. He is Juan, a friend responsible for creating an aura of mystery about this enigmatic town as well as the need to visit it. When Juan discovered the place and its church, he made himself a promise: “someday I will visit that dead village with its living church”, and that is how he persuaded a group of friends among whom was myself.
The snapshot was taken on October 30 2010, after a complicated and long journey of more than three hours walking in the rain and mud.
I will always remember Otal and its mystery, its collapsed houses, its ruins emerging from the colorful autumn, the mud on my boots, and above all, I will remember Juan’s face after seeing one of his most desired efforts fulfilled, and of course, for its living church in the dead town.
The course is now finished and I would like to wish you all a happy summer. Congratulations to those who passed the exam in June, and for those who have to resit in September, please don't forget to look at the dates and times of your exams, which are published on the school notice boards.
