Sant Pere de Rhodes

Sant Pere de Rhodes in Cap de Creus

Just over the Pyrenee Mountains is France, some 20 km from our route through the wild region called Cap de Creus, Cape of the Cross, named for pilgrims who traveled winding roads on the pilgrimage to St. Jacques de Compostella. There are areas of the Pyrenees that are still impassable, others whose hospices have welcomed travelers for 1,000 years. The roads of the Pyrenees have been controlled by kings, bandits, smugglers and they were the roads that more than 470,000 refugees took to France at the end of the Spanish Civil War. We passed through Vilajuiga, which sheltered refugees--the hotel was set up for children, organized by the Ministry of Justice of the Republic, which would be defeated. The last airplanes flew from here during the retreat on 6 Feb 1939 as the almost half million Republicans fled.

St, Creu

At the top of Cap de Creus is St. Pere de Rhodes, once a powerful monastery along the pilgrimage road, atop a lofty crop of high rock with a stupendous blue view. Above the hazy sea its pathways are still revered, a starting point to St. Jacques de Compostella. We climbed through the crumbled church of the ruins of St. Creu, a medieval village, its sturdy arch portal still graceful, then to St. Pere.

There had been a building there in the 6th c., and then a monastic cell in the 9th c., disputed between two abbeys. But in the 10th c. a noble called Tasi and Count Gausfred of Empuries donated land and received privileges from the popes and Frankish kings of Charlemagne's empire, creating an abbey in 944, built on the model of a Roman temple. It reached its peak of power in 12th-13th c., one of the most important centres of spiritual, political and economic power of the day.

Sant Pere

The church has a very high and narrow nave with monumental Corinthian columns dominating in double rows on either side. Below is the original crypt with convoluted low arches, above is an ambulatory with brief remnants of bright murals in a wide-eyed primitive Romanesque style. Christ on the cross is fully dressed, his eyes staring stoically.

Christ on the cross

Much restored, Sant Pere's beauty is severe, as were the Benedictine monks. Twenty or so lived here at a time in a common room. A lower cloister with short columns was their gathering place, but an upper cloister was built, higher with more of the immaculate sky. By the 16th-17th c the monks had begun to build individual quarters high up in the upper ambulatory, which ambles into one of the three square towes which had become private chapels over the sea. Though it was a place of pilgrimage, the Benedictine order forbade much contact with the world and the complicated stone rooms seem like dungeons despite their lofty exposure to the sea and sky.

Frieze of Christ appearing to his disciples

The monastery was looted repeatedly so only tiniest fragments of its character remain: Christ appears to his disciples in a stone frieze, very fierce and Spanish faces; in the carving of the Corinthian columns, and remnants of color that once covered the walls.

We had a run-in with the maitre-d' of the restaurant and walked out, starving, to descend to our car and gobble up our huge peaches.

Inner monastery

Then we drove down winding roads to Port de la Selva, white and slate like Cadaques but less magical, where I had an outstanding golden grilled dorade with Catolonian ragout served by a sullen senora. We drove out on a serpentine and precipitous road at the very edge of the rock over the sea and beach which consisted wrinkled boulders beaten by foam.

Goats of Cap Creu

We could see a hillside covered with multicolored slabs in haphazard arrangements and wondered if it was a ravaged graveyward. Pulling up, we saw they were goats--some 50 of them gobbling up the hillside of the Cap Creu natural preserve, big rams on their hind legs chewing on tree branches, curious kids with their delicate limbs and unfazed stared, the curious bland regard of goats moving around us, uninterested in our presence. Every so often two black dogs would rush into their midst and drive them across the road, bleating, all graceful sleek limbs and horns, with full udders or full stesticles. They complained about the dogs to us but hurried along. Finally the goatherd appeared, staunch and brown with a wicker bottle and a staff, much less endeared by the lovely creatures then we were.

We took the long roads, serpentine and straight under a hazy sky, home. And then we swam, alone on the beach at 7pm. We plunged into the dark green blue waters, satiny and briney above marine forests.