“You approach Compostela the way you would a miracle.”

Álvaro Cunqueiro

‘Las geografías imaginarias’

“Santiago de Compostela is a surprising creation. It was born of a star indicating a tomb and flourished around this sepulchre. In any case, we are speaking about an open work, with spiral pages of chronology that overlap each other like the petals of an enigmatic rose.”

Manuel Rivas

Presentation of the film ‘La Rosa de Piedra’

“… you know that as soon as we arrive in Compostela, all of our sins –even those we are not even aware of- will be forgiven. (…) At the end of our journey, we will see ourselves as newborn infants. We will see the invisible.” 

Jesús Torbado

‘El peregrino’

“I have always believed, and still do, that the most beautiful square in the world is that of Sienna. The only one that has made me doubt is that of Santiago de Compostela, due to its balance and its youthful air, which hides its venerable age and makes it look as if it had been built the day before by someone who had lost the notion of time. It is a living city, taken over by a crowd of cheerful, noisy students, who gave it no respite in order to age. On its intact walls, vegetation breaks through the cracks in a relentless fight to overcome oblivion, and each step of the way you come across, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the miracle of flowering stone.” 

Gabriel García Márquez

‘Viendo llover en Galicia’. El País

“(…) and looking at the city from Paseo de la Herradura , it is like a large, dark forest of stone, standing out above the bright green of the countryside.” 

Miguel de Unamuno

‘Andanzas y visiones españolas’

“I recognise the main door of the cathedral very easily (…) and I think I love it more and that it means more to me that any other building in the world.” 

Ernest Hemingway

‘The Cardinal picks a winner’

“Also the stone, if there are stars, flies / Above the bevelled and cold night / grow, twin lilies of boldness, / grow, push, towers of Compostela.” 

Gerardo Diego

‘Ante las torres de Compostela’

“Mystic rose of stone, Romanesque and rough flower, as in the time of the pilgrimages, it still has the naïve grace of old rhymed Latin. Day by day, the prayer of a thousand years is reborn in the pealing of its hundred bells, in the shadow of its porticos with saints and beggars, in the resounding silence of its atriums with Franciscan flowers growing between the flagstones (…).” 

Ramón del Valle Inclán

‘La lámpara maravillosa’

“ Chove en Santiago / meu doce amor. / Camelia branca do ar / brila entebrecida ô sol. / Chove en Santiago / na noite escrura. / Herbas de prata e de sono / cobren a valeira lúa.” 

“¿Quén fire potro de pedra / na mesma porta do sono' / ¡É a lúa! ¡É a lúa! / na Quintana dos mortos!” 

Federico García Lorca

‘Seis poemas gallegos’

“Santiago , sea of stone / shuddering with the wind.” 

Celso Emilio Ferreiro

Obra completa

“In daylight, the Jerusalem of the West (…) seems venerable and peaceful, without austerity or frowning; but during the long winter nights, when darkness thickens in the narrow streets and the enormous cathedral overshadows the square of Quintana de Muertos, and the clock counts the hours with a bronze tongue and the moon reflects vaporous rays of light onto the tall towers, Santiago makes a solemn impression.” 

Emilia Pardo Bazán

‘Pascual López. Autobiografía de un estudiante de Medicina’

“ (…) now I will always be suspicious of what is hidden in my city's shadows and stones, so given, incidentally, to attracting storms.” 

Suso de Toro

‘Trece Campanadas’

“Compostela is made around the bell. The bell creates everything day by day, century by century, doing nothing but telling the time. And the fog is the chaos from which the bell brings things out.” 

Gonzalo Torrente Ballester

‘Compostela y su ángel’

“Goodbye! …When I return, if I return, everything will be just as it is: The same black hills and the same daybreaks, of the Sar and the Sarela looking at themselves in their waters; the same green fields, the same brownish-grey towers of the severe cathedral looking into the distance…” 

Rosalía de Castro

‘Follas Novas’

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