A 1000 Year Old Pilgrimage Site

Montserrat Monastery in the Mountains

Hostel Guilleumes, Monistrol
Not our favourite place but it was okay for one night.

We have enjoyed our time in Barcelona. Five nights was perfect but we only saw a small bit of what this lovely city has to offer. Overall, we found it to be an artistic city with unique architecture. It has easy access to both mountains and the sea. The streets are easy to walk on, the public transportation is great and the food is delicious. Our Hotel Ronda was clean and comfortable and in a perfect location. It met all of our needs.

And so now, we are moving on to Montserrat, the “serrated mountain” that is northwest of Barcelona. It has been a pilgrimage site for a thousand years. Hymns explain how the mountain was carved by little angels with golden saws. Nice image…

We will take the metro (with our pass) to the closeby Placa Espanya train station. The Line R5 train leaves every hour starting at around 8:30 a.m. to Monistrol where our hostel is located at the base of the mountain. Then we will take a rack train to the monastery. A rack train is used to go up steep inclines without slipping down.

The monastery is located 2,400’ up. There are 30 Benedictine monks who carry on its spiritual traditions of prayer and work and 50 boys, and recently a few girls, who sing in one of the oldest boys’ choirs in Europe - Escolania de Monserrat. Documents testify to the existence of a religious and music school in Montserrat as far back as the 14th century.

We saw that there was going to be 100% chance of rain and 4C! Not the greatest day to go up into the mountains but we are only here once so “que sera sera”. Actually the scenery with the rain clouds/mist reminded us of our visit to Machu Picchu in Peru several years ago. It was rainy then too. Mystical.

When we arrived in Monistrol, we hunted for our hostel in the rain, left our bags and hurried to catch the rack train up to the monastery. The boys choir was singing at 1 pm for 10 minutes and we wanted to hear them. Unfortunately, we didn’t get there on time and they had just finished when we got to the basilica. But luckily, we can watch them perform on Utube!

We purchased seniors tickets (you always have to ask) to tour the Basilica and to see the Black Madonna. The basilica was beautiful with walls completely covered from floor to ceiling with beautiful art - mosaics, sculptures, frescoes, stained glass, paintings, etc. so much time and money put into making it beautiful!

The Black Madonna statue is very special to the Catalan people. This wooden statue is known by many names including; La Moreneta, St. Mary of Montserrat, the Black Virgin and most commonly The Virgin of Montserrat. The monastery was built around its accessibility to the Black Madonna, which is located within the basilica. Apparently, it was carved in the 1200s. Pope Leo XIII declared the Black Madonna to be the patron saint of Catalonia.

There is a lot of mystery surrounding the fact that she is black.

Many believe that the statue has healing powers and thousands of miraculous cures are credited to this sacred piece of wood. Most of the statue sits behind a protective sheet of glass, except for one hand. In this hand the statue holds a sphere, which represents the universe. This is the only part of the statue not protected behind glass and it is said that pilgrims simply need to touch this exposed area to be healed.

It continued to rain in the afternoon and the cold mountain air made it feel pretty chilly. Our layers worked though and our clothes dried quickly once we returned to the hostel.

We ate dinner at a local bar, La Roca - huge portions of tasty food and very inexpensive. We had some interesting conversations with the locals who were eating there. They were tickled that we were from Canada and that we could and wanted to speak to them. It was fun. The Catalan language is spoken here but they can speak Castilian Spanish too so we understood them.

Oh, as many of you know, Mongolia has been on my bucket list for a long time. Mine, not so much Chris’. Today we met a lady from Mongolia! She felt that this was an omen for me. Lol. I certainly hope so!Read more