PATRICK LYNCH retraces the journey taken by Spain's forgotten migrant workers on the 'ghost train' between Bilbao and León
‘EL EXPRESSO de la Robla” was an old steam train that ran between the port city of Bilbao and the provincial Roman capital of León. It scooped up coal from the mines of the eastern Picos de Europa and raw peasant muscle from its pueblos as it went – fuel and factory fodder for Bilbao’s industrial revolution.
Its mythology is woven into the folklore of the city and celebrated in a popular novel, The Boy who Rode the Iron Train. It even gave rise to a form of "locomotive cuisine" – "La Olla Ferrovial" or train stew, a pottage of beans, greens and choritzo, cooked in a special cauldron on the coals of the train's furnace – food for the dispossessed migrants as they were plucked from the medieval provinces around León and deposited in the Basque city, where Spain's industrial age finally began.
It was Bilbao’s moment of glory before civil war and fascism tore her apart. And it’s the modernist architecture from that period that defines the city, perhaps even more than the much celebrated Guggenheim. A good example is Concordia Station, a railway terminus where modernist style is welded into cast-iron substance. It’s here that the “huddled masses” arrived from the badlands down the lineLeon. They would still recognise the station -– for a hundred years.
But they would not recognise the train in which I am sitting as she pulls out of platform one, with us tourists as her cargo.She is the brand new “Expresso” and we are retracing the migrant’s journey – however ironically – from the cushioned splendour of a first class train cabin, quaintly imagined as a homage to the Belle Époque, the Orient Express and the golden age of rail travel. The contrast with the old steam train could not be greater, but every now and then she will shudder as if to remind us that we are riding on the same narrow-gauge line as her grubby ancestor. She may be an elegant ghost, but she’s a ghost nonetheless.
The tracks criss-cross the ancient fault line between Moorish and Visigothic Christian Spain, roughly following the Way of St James, although we’re not travelling as penitent pilgrims – far from it. Four days of pampering and indulgence await us. The staff are dressed like bellhops, in smart blue uniforms with gold piping along the seams, and they have an uncanny ability to anticipate our every whim (usually, in my case, a large glass of Rioja).
I submit eagerly to the luxury, but with a vague sense of unease. Have I sold my soul to some ferrovial devil? There are all sorts of devils along the route as the train takes us deep into the heart of obscure, Romanesque provinces. I encounter my first in the Cave Hermitage of San Bernabé high in the mountains north of Burgos. He was painted on the walls of the cave, gluttonously devouring damned souls – he seemed to be enjoying it!
The caves were inhabited up until the beginning of the 20th century and many of the walls are covered in paintings that graphically depict the torture, dismemberment and martyrdom of local saints. To us they may appear naive, but then I imagine the cave dwellers, sitting in the dark candlelit chambers, mumbling prayers as a bloody wound, a tortured face, or a grimacing devil, emerges and then vanishes back into the gloom.
This is the first of many so called “medieval moments” I experience on the trip, when the dark religiosity of the art becomes a little overwhelming. (Note: try to avoid mixing the above with a hangover.)
LATER THAT evening, I eat a little too much of the rich wild boar stew and drink lots of the local wine at a remote hunters’ hotel, the Parador of Fuentes Carrionas, before we trundle further into the mountains, stopping at the station of a former mining village, Vado-Cervera, to spend the night.
A nightcap is served, for Dutch courage, and I retire to my en suite cabin, excited rather than nervous at the thought that wolves might be prowling around outside. I dream heavily – haunted by wild boars, mingling with images of martyred saints, crucifixions and mythical beasts.
Oddly in my dream I hear a bell, and odder still, the feeling of motion. I’m being pulled into a cave by a . . . I awake to discover that it is morning, the train is moving once more, and that the bell has been rung by Anna our steward to invite us to breakfast.
Soon, I am sipping coffee and munching on a Danish pastry, enjoying the idyllic landscape framed within the window of the buffet car. The morning is fresh; the strange dreams have vanished with the night, and I arrive in León, vowing not to overdo it again.
I visit the Basilica of Saint Isidoro, where as well as discovering some of the finest examples of Mozarabe design (a fusion of Arabic and Romanesque styles), I learn that there is also a “Pardon Gate”, specially created for miscreants like myself, who can’t (for whatever reason) make it all the way to Santiago de Compostela.
The Gothic cathedral of León still dominates the city. Inside, I fall under the spell of the tinted light, filtering through the spectacular stained-glass windows. But later when dining at the wine caves of Prieto Picudo, I fall spectacularly off the wagon when I have to wash down a feast of Cocido Madrileño (roast pigs trotter) with a bottle or two of Leónese red wine.
A pattern has emerged, and it continues for most of the rest of the journey. The roads back to the “satanic mills” of industrial Bilbao are indeed paved with good intentions.
But on the last day I had my “epiphany”. We were visiting the museum town of Aguilar de Campoo, which is dominated by a 12th-century Gothic castle, once the royal seat of Peter the Cruel, who slaughtered his siblings to gain the throne of León. Its authenticity is almost overwhelming: arcaded medieval squares, defensive gateways, the sepulchres and paintings of saints in the church of San Miguel, with life-like statues of Jesus and Mary that are oddly dressed with real human hair. It feels as if the Inquisition happened here last week.
I sat on the coffin-like seats, carved on either side, of an old stone bridge that spans the Pisuerga river near the Jewish quarter.
Only the sparrows darting under, above and about me seemed happy, unlike the gangs of gormless teenagers, who wander aimlessly around the winding streets, bored senseless, trapped in a time capsule. Their parents work in the huge biscuit factory nearby, and occasionally a breeze will carry the sweet aroma of baking dough from its industrial ovens – it smelled to me a little like incense.
That did it. It was one “medieval moment” too many. I vowed to mend my ways. Later that evening as we pulled back into Bilbao, I spied the Guggenheim’s famous sparkling façade that seems to tumble into the river. That is where I will find my antidote, I thought, art as a kind of retail therapy: abstract, conceptual, throwaway, shocking? Perhaps, but in a forgettable, 21st-century sort of way.
It was just what I needed after the intense, hyper-real and unforgettable experience as a passenger on “El Expresso de la Robla”, the old ghost train to León.