A place in Asturias called Bedón

Perhaps that autobiographical obstinacy preached by Hermann Hesse, Nobel Prize winner by designation and globetrotting compadre by choice, was not powerful enough to scratch the pride and resilience of some people, who, for whatever reasons, decided one day to embark on the ship of destiny and leave this small Asturian Ithaca at the mercy of the sirens, the cyclops and the Laestrygonians of Nature.

We find ourselves in Bedón, a desolately charming place, which, seen from the head of what in medieval times was one of the more than one hundred Romanesque monasteries that existed in the Principality of Asturias, borders to the west with that vital artery that is the Highway and to the east, with that ungovernable and strong-willed genius that are the untamed waters of the Cantabrian Sea.

It may be that here, as is known to have happened in that other strange place on the Saint James Way, called Castrojeriz, the monks, who knows if they were Antonian monks at some point in their history and because of the place's name, San Antolín, a loving diminutive of San Antón, also cured that terrible medieval disease, ergotism or that, apart from the well-known legend of the nobleman who repented for the sin of gender violence that founded it, retiring from the world, it was, as some traditions claim, the throats of Templar monks who intoned their mysterious misereres after laudas, which, in the end, means nothing compared to the feeling of loss and loneliness that emanate from such an enigmatic place.

NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property and therefore, are subject to my Copyright.