O Cebreiro - religious

After two of my longest legs and todays 2000 ft climb I will take tomorrow as a rest day here. Such a beautiful place when the Sun is out!

O Cebreiro as legend has it, was a Templar hiding place of the Holy Grail. A local farmer braved a snow storm to attend communion. The parish priest chastised him for risking his life for some bread and wine, at which the two transfigured to flesh and blood.

This is also the resting place of O Cebreiros’ parish priest of the 1960s and early 70s. Dr. D. Elias Valiña Sampedro. Pere Elias earned his PhD, studying the ancient Frances Camino De Santiago. He is generally regarded as the reinvigorator of the modern Camino. It was he who instigated the drawing of yellow arrows to mark The Camino for pilgrims and is basis for many legends. In the late 1960s Basque separatists were fighting with the Guardia Civil. Pere Elias was detained by the guardia near Pamplona, far from home, because his vans liscense plates indicated he was not from the location. When they asked him to open up his van, it was full of cans of yellow paint. Asked what he was up to, Pere Elias prophetically exclaimed, “I’m preparing the way for a vast invasion.” The Guardia required a parish representative to drive all the way to Pamplona to pick up Pere Elias.Read more