plmate
Journey to the past, Alcala la Real
Walking through the Fortaleza de la Mota, in Alcalá la Real, is a privilege within the reach of most. The remains that the excavations have brought to light and the buildings that have been so carefully restored make it easy for us to travel to another age full of legends. The silence and peace that you breathe on this bright day in March hold you back as if you were the victim of some spell dictated by a character from your long past. Old streets, ice deposits, cellars, ruins of humble houses and others not so humble, the wall and its gates, the Alcázar and its tower... place you in a setting whose geometry integrates you, little by little, without being aware of it.
Its first name, Qal'at Astalir, changed from the 8th century, as did its urban structure, through the numerous events that took place on this hill, until the definitive Al-Qal'a. Time also brought the Christians to this place - whom I prefer to imagine surprised and surrendered before such an advanced community - and as a bulwark that competes with the rest of the fortress, the abbey church still stands erect. Inside, a spiral staircase allows access, in the shadows and with the help of a beam of light that sneaks through an opening in its walls, to the choir of the temple from which one has an extraordinary perspective of the building, particularly the entire floor of the main nave in which dozens of open tombs make up a gruesome landscape from which all the bodies lying here seem to have fled.
So much time in this place my emotions were dilating in such a way that at a certain moment, walking through the ramparts of the fortress I believed my mind was already alienated when I could see the majestic Sierra Nevada -snow-capped- floating over the orderly fields of olive trees that seemed to obey to the gentle rocking of an immeasurable sea. A sea whose green had been usurped in an authoritative gesture by the sky blue that impregnated absolutely the entire landscape that stretched out before my sight (see the attached photograph).
Journey to the past, Alcala la Real
Walking through the Fortaleza de la Mota, in Alcalá la Real, is a privilege within the reach of most. The remains that the excavations have brought to light and the buildings that have been so carefully restored make it easy for us to travel to another age full of legends. The silence and peace that you breathe on this bright day in March hold you back as if you were the victim of some spell dictated by a character from your long past. Old streets, ice deposits, cellars, ruins of humble houses and others not so humble, the wall and its gates, the Alcázar and its tower... place you in a setting whose geometry integrates you, little by little, without being aware of it.
Its first name, Qal'at Astalir, changed from the 8th century, as did its urban structure, through the numerous events that took place on this hill, until the definitive Al-Qal'a. Time also brought the Christians to this place - whom I prefer to imagine surprised and surrendered before such an advanced community - and as a bulwark that competes with the rest of the fortress, the abbey church still stands erect. Inside, a spiral staircase allows access, in the shadows and with the help of a beam of light that sneaks through an opening in its walls, to the choir of the temple from which one has an extraordinary perspective of the building, particularly the entire floor of the main nave in which dozens of open tombs make up a gruesome landscape from which all the bodies lying here seem to have fled.
So much time in this place my emotions were dilating in such a way that at a certain moment, walking through the ramparts of the fortress I believed my mind was already alienated when I could see the majestic Sierra Nevada -snow-capped- floating over the orderly fields of olive trees that seemed to obey to the gentle rocking of an immeasurable sea. A sea whose green had been usurped in an authoritative gesture by the sky blue that impregnated absolutely the entire landscape that stretched out before my sight (see the attached photograph).