Palencia, down the road
At 40ºC below zero, everything was frozen, snow plows, lashes and our adventurous spirit. We were on the Little Island of Diomedes, in the confines of Alaska, in the middle of the Bering Strait. An Eskimo was crushing the ice to make a hole into which he could cast his rod. The polar winds increased the feeling of cold on that frozen sea. I looked at the Eskimo with a mixture of admiration and condolence: "Why do you keep living here?”, asked. Then he stopped crushing the ice. He looked at me with a clean smile, shrugging shoulders: "Because this is my home".
It was irrefutable, there was nothing else to explain. Your home, his childhood, their dead, all that was there, on an island so inhospitable it was scary. That place was part of an expedition that took me around the planet in an SUV for more than two years.
If you detach yourself from your roots you run the risk of stopping traveling and starting to flee.
I know many travelers who proudly assume their status as "citizens of the world". I don't know what that means, maybe a burst of freedom, in my opinion, misunderstood. I live in Madrid and I have had the privilege of crossing more than 80 countries with my camera, looking for stories, from other people's homes. I've seen rivers flying in the Canaima mountains, I have crossed the amazon, I have trodden Antarctica, I have crossed the Gobi desert, I have enjoyed the nights of Moscow and the mornings of Cartagena de Indias, I've lost everything in Vegas and found peace in the Ngorongoro. I've walked alongside streams of lava and white rhinos, in sacred valleys and on Mayan ruins… but it is in Palencia where I am at home, because I feel the company of what I have been. The roots are part of the traveler. If you get rid of them, you run the risk of stopping traveling and starting to flee.
The feeling of belonging has nothing to do with a provincial position. In the comparison lies the error. I know that there are more emblematic bridges than our Roman Bridge and the Unknown Beauty is not as beautiful as other cathedrals. The Calle Mayor or the Cristo del Otero do not reach the greatness of other streets and other monuments. But those places are ours, those who walk with dignity, the ones we have shared.
Cities are nothing, nothing at all, if they are not shared, if the link with those who live in them is not created.
Cities are nothing, nothing at all, if they are not shared, if the link with those who live in them is not created. Cities are experiences, they are the first love, a poem written in the distance, the memory of a grandfather, the store next door, a friend and a quarrel, snippets of history forged by those who have left and the future of those who are to come. Without that, a city is stone and cement, barren space with more or less ornamentation and architecture.
From Palencia I stay with its light without beaches, its wheat fields and its festivals. I understand your language and speak your language with affection, because this city invites friendly conversation, without national grudges, without the nationalist anxiety. I would say that Palencia is a smart city because it combines Castilian humility with the pride of the people of Palencia. We do not need shouting or banners to show off the splendor of our parks, nor do we appeal to the identity of the town while we contemplate the tower of San Miguel. We, like all, our wars, our saints and our Virgin, that even she is from the street so that she is closer, without great altars.
Palencia is a smart city because it combines Castilian humility with the pride of the people of Palencia
We are doing Palencia together, with the noise of the rocks or the sound of castanets, with the dream of seeing a rise in the Balastera, with our olympic athletes, with the verses to the death of a father or conversations in the heat of the Trébede.
He returns to this city as one returns to the truce after the storm. This is for me the place of my nephews, of summers with an afternoon jacket and Christmas presents. I can understand that when winter is spent here one comes to yearn for sea landscapes, but Palencia reinvents itself with the smell of roasted chestnuts and the freedom of children playing in the arcades. Sometimes I feel like missing her for, To come back, reconcile me with his serenity, but what am I going to do, I tend to walk away.
I am a journalist by vocation and I travel out of necessity. It is curiosity that embarks me on new routes, I want to live other forms of joy, chasing horizons and finding the shock of other cultures. Traveling is perhaps the most sensible way to get lost in that labyrinth we call life. And so we walk, still lost. I have known destinations that seemed familiar to me, I could live in Morelia or Buenos Aires, get fed up with spicy and surrender to the melancholy of tango, I could even settle in the confines of Russia, or on the banks of the Nile, or in the cabins of Norway, or under the palm trees of Fortaleza. Could live there, yes. Maybe they are happier places, more beautiful or more fun, but they are not mine.
Traveling is perhaps the most sensible way to get lost in that labyrinth we call life
We tend to think that interesting places make people interesting, but it is rather the opposite: it is the people who make a place worthwhile.
During the journey that took us around the world we were able to get closer to the indigenous communities of Asia, America and Africa. Those tribes showed us an unprecedented way of respecting their land. They loved everything that made them who they were, they did not compare, because the value of the roots is non-transferable. We learned to appreciate the magic of the baobabs or the ceibas, not because they are slimmer trees than others but because they were part of their forests. And they shared those forests and those roots.
Nothing is expendable in the place where one is born. My city is missing you and I am missing when we leave. Today I feel what the Eskimo felt when crushing the ice: in Palencia is my home, there are my dead and there is my childhood, that's why he's still waiting for me, down the road.
Comments (4)
Ruben Suarez
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Always as intense Daniel as everyone you write on this page. I have always debated with all those who never spoke well of their people or their land, because there is always something that is only found there, starting from one's own roots.
Greetings
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Lydia
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I have been moved. A lovely text, Daniel.
I have finished reading your book and I loved it. I was dosing it, to think about what I was reading. Your trip has a lot of merit, after all the difficulties you overcame.
I have been especially interested in attitudes, emotions, behaviors, both among you and with the people who crossed your path.
It takes a lot of temperance, education and generosity to live together for two years in the most varied circumstances.
And I am glad to know that you are going to make the trip that you already had in mind on your return to Seville.
When it turns from one, the next one is already beginning to be planned.
Good luck.
Greetings
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Isabel Alconero
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I love it when I read something and identify with it, such as.
I was born and raised in Palencia and then life took me around the world. 19 years and 37 countries later, my skin prickles when I read you.
Although I live in Madrid, I do not understand life without traveling and knowing other places and their people (It will be for being an aquarium-errant by nature-, or perhaps because of the train that we heard through the trees of the Huerta Guadián -because we were almost neighbors- ), but my Palencia, don't touch it… always at the end of the road, is, always on my horizon.
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Laura B
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Wonderful text, full of heart, of literature and truths.
Congratulations.
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