What to see in O Cebreiro?
History
At about 1,300 metres, on the pass between El Bierzo and Galicia, O Cebreiro had a pilgrim hospital very early on, in the centuries that followed the discovery of the tomb of Saint James the Greater. Before that there was already a shepherds’ settlement here, with its pallozas of stone and thatch.
Alfonso VI, closely linked to the Order of Cluny, gave the monastery and hospital around 1072 to the Benedictine monks of Saint-Géraud d’Aurillac, in France. That is why the hospice was dedicated to Saint Gerald. The pre-Romanesque church of Santa María la Real is the oldest surviving building on the Camino Francés.
With royal privileges and donations, the priory was the most important centre of the district during the Middle Ages.
In 1486 the Catholic Monarchs, on their way back from Santiago de Compostela, stopped here, learned of the miracle and gave a reliquary to hold its relics. Shortly afterwards, to keep foreign influence away, the priory was placed under the monastery of San Benito in Valladolid.
From the 16th century the priory declined, and the 19th-century disentailment left it without monks. In the 20th century the parish priest Elías Valiña, who is buried beside the church, drove the revival of the Camino and painted the first yellow arrows.
The miracle and the chalice
The church of Santa María keeps a 12th-century Romanesque chalice, known as «the Holy Grail of O Cebreiro», one of the symbols of the Camino Frances. The chalice appears on the coat of arms of Galicia.
Tradition tells that on a stormy day around 1300, a monk who doubted his faith was saying Mass, thinking nobody would climb up in such weather. A peasant from Barxamaior, Juan Santín, arrived, and the monk scorned his effort «for a bit of bread and wine». At the consecration, the host turned into flesh and the wine into blood.
Since 1486 the Catholic Monarchs’ reliquary has kept the remains of the miracle. The story travelled across Europe on the lips of pilgrims, and some link it to the Grail legends that inspired works such as Wagner’s Parsifal.
Some historians believe the idea of the «Grail» arose from a confusion: the hospice was dedicated to Saint Gerald of Aurillac, called Guiral in Occitan.
The village today
Today O Cebreiro is a stone hamlet with several restored pallozas, one of them turned into an ethnographic museum. It has a public hostel, guesthouses and restaurants where you can try Cebreiro cheese, which has its own designation of origin. Mist is frequent, but on clear days the views over the valleys are among the best on the whole Camino.