Because there is a heterodox Toledo that you have not heard of
They say that the devil knows more for being old than for being a devil. And Toledo is old, very old. Veteran, better; It is not going to be that this man from Castilla-La Mancha overwhelms us and lets himself fall into the arms of gentrifying facelifts that make his streets confuse with those of any other city.
Toledo is also wise, very much. He treasures and preserves in the memory of his mother rock, the one on which he sits and that has given him so many headaches, the stories and experiences that over the centuries have been recorded by the three cultures that inhabited it. Some experiences that are hidden beyond the Cathedral - Alcázar - Zocodover axis, that orthodox Toledo that stars in most of the visits, relegating to the background the heterodox , the one who tells us, between confident whispers only suitable for the curious and people without fear of being shaken by his schemes, that Toledo is magical, underground and sinister. Literally.
Toledo is magical, underground and sinister. Literally
Toledo is rich in legends, it has to give and give away (man does not live on marzipan alone); his past is preserved under the cobblestones, which no, they do not hide beach sand, but they do Arab baths, Roman baths or Jewish houses ; and, complying with what they say that the walls keep the memory when there has been a lot of pain, it can become terrifying.
They know a lot about this Routes of Toledo , a tourist company that with its guided tours immerses the visitor in the B side of the city, in less obvious streets but equally full of History and stories and where they intend to make you have a good time between legends, facts and stories about unusual events. Because no, you didn't know everything about Toledo.
Here they accumulate magic, hard-to-believe events and open secrets beyond the possibilities of any understanding that make us recognize that Toledo is magical, as a fact, not as an adjective used to describe its superlative charm.
Luis Rodriguez Bausa one of the Rutas de Toledo guides, he explains in his book Unusual Toledo that this may be due to a number of factors, among which he cites “an uncertain origin -even mythological- of the city; the presence for many centuries of the Jewish and Muslim cultures in alleged coexistence with the Christian; the strength of Christian asceticism represented by the order of the Temple together with the rigor of our counter-reformist court of the Holy Office (...) ".
The iconography of fabulous beings in its churches contributes to giving it that magical touch
He also speaks of "(...) the Grailic legend of Eschembach, the immense cultural work that emerged from the School of Translators; the many magicians, astrologers and necromancers who practiced their arts on our soil; the enlightened travelers who came here eager for knowledge and forbidden lore; the important sorceress nucleus that lived in the city in the 16th and 17th centuries; a dark urban landscape, cavernous and therefore conducive to dreams and wonders; a special iconography of fabulous beings in our churches and monasteries…”
They also contribute cases such as the skeleton house, whose story Luis tells during the route of the ** sinister Toledo .** In this Jewish mansion that a Toledo architect bought they came to light skeletons of children about 200 years old when they began to chip away at walls in the rehabilitation works. After this, strange phenomena happened: voices calling them by name, the sounds of footsteps going up to the terrace, drawings appearing on the wall, children's laughter... The ritual proposed by a Mexican shaman put an end to the phenomena.
These types of situations usually occur in places where the souls have not finished making the transit because they left something pending in life, they were attached to the place or they want to express their disagreement with something. Probably, one of these reasons is the one behind what was happening in one of the mansions that make up the route. A couple from Valladolid arrived in 1998: she, a neurologist; the engineer.
After installing, they began to hear running footsteps in the attic, They had to close two rooms, one due to thermogenesis (lower temperatures due to the presence of people) and air currents that closed books and turned pages, the other, which served as an ironing room, because, being alone at home, she noticed that someone was brushing her hair and caressing her back; and, among other things, the lights began to get out of control and ended up shining with excessive intensity with the current even cut off.
He was the Jesuit father Jose Maria Pilon along with Luis himself, who came to the mansion to leave a radio cassette recording and check if you heard anything. At minute 28, a woman's voice repeated three words and a phrase: “Pigs, murderers, fascists. Leave us alone." And it is that here, they were Republican women shot during the dictatorship; and, you know, the walls have memory. Currently, the house is inhabited and it is unknown if this type of phenomenon continues to be repeated.
The game is between women, this time between those in the neighborhood of the Pozo Amargo, also known as the neighborhood of the witches… We talk about sorceresses like Elizabeth the Baptist , that she used to guess with the cards if a person would be lucky in love; either Ana de la Cruz, expert in flirting men , that is, to leave them powerless, to prevent them from going to war or shepherding from leaving with other women. To do this, she would tie five knots in one of the man's garments, which would then be placed under the place where he slept.
beatrice king, guide of the route of the ** Magical Toledo **, also tells us the history of Eleanor Barganza , a Jewish convert who walked around Toledo dressed as a nun and devoted herself to replenish the maidenhood of young women using unhygienic practices that demonstrate, once again, the precarious situation of women throughout history.
Devil's Alley
Probably the sorceress who had it the hardest was Catherine Sanchez , who was denounced by 224 neighbors, although without success since they could not convict her of witchcraft because they never caught her communicating with the devil using animals for it, which was what they claimed she did. She ended her days caring for syphilis patients at the balsam hospital.
At that time, the sixteenth century, the Inquisition considered witches (the name given to them from the Tagus up) to be very dangerous, while showed a certain tolerance towards sorceresses (from the Tagus down). The proof of this is that there was 400 light convictions for sorcery and 11 for witchcraft, who died in the bonfire that was lit in the Plaza de Zocodover, in the same place where, oh ironies of life, now occupies a chain of hamburgers, of those that are roasted on the grill. Despite the fact that it was the people who required her services, many of them related to love issues.
Or that's what she's talking about legend of the She-Devil, what counts how Philip Pantoja, a christian in love with Rebeca , the most beautiful Jewess in the city, turns to a sorceress for help in order to see herself reciprocated. She this she elaborated a filter that made Rebeca fall madly in love with Felipe, to the point of changing her religion to be able to marry him. The same wedding night, after the link, the Jewish woman died at the same time as in the alley of Hell the house of the Devil was burning with flames that indicated that the gates of hell had been opened as punishment for that mixture of two separate worlds, for the Jewish woman's renunciation of her religion and for whom she had made this 'aberration' possible.
Holy Brotherhood Inn Dungeons
And from the alley of Hell, we lose ourselves in the Devil's Alley or Locum Street, names that the Church wanted to eliminate from the street map in the 19th century in an attempt to detach Toledo from that magic and those mysteries attributed to it, until reaching the Inn of the Holy Brotherhood.
Here, in its cellars, was the place where probably the greatest atrocities in the history of the city were committed: the dungeons of the Holy Brotherhood, the body that was created to take care of the roads that were unprotected after the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. Of the cells that were, only the name of one of them is known, that of Valdeinfierno, in which in about 20 square meters up to 80 people were crammed alive waiting to be executed. Those walls inspired the story The Pit and the Pendulum, by Edgar Allan Poe.
If on the surface it seems infinite, the subsoil of a city that could not expand in width and had to do so in height was not going to be less. Beatriz compares the layers of Toledo to those of a cake and assures that “If you travel to Toledo and don't see its subways, it's as if you had never been here”.
This is what one learns on the underground Toledo route that takes advantage of the remains that have been found, and continue to be found, under Toledo houses to explain the passage through the city of the three cultures that inhabited it and their legacy. First note that dismantles myths: the coexistence that is sold to us as peaceful, was not such ; they just tolerated each other when it interested them.
Cenizal Arab Bath, one of those visited on the 'Subterranean Toledo' route
Thus, from Arab baths to Jewish houses, passing through Roman baths, facts as unknown to the uninitiated in the matter as **the differences in the ground level over the centuries (Toledo has become very high) * * and talk about problem that the city has always had with water due to the inability to move it from the Tagus River to the top of the bedrock where the houses are located and how they managed to solve it.
Also, through the salvaged wreckage one can imagine what these spaces were physically like and Beatriz, with her explanations, introduces the different customs and habits that Muslims, Jews and Christians they had in the bathrooms: from purification to considering them the networking place of the time.
In this way, with our senses more alert than usual, lest we perceive something out of the ordinary, we end up getting lost in narrow streets and alleys, those where we flee from the academic and the official and where the ability to surprise us still is styled for fall in love again with a city with which our idyll had been broken by using it so much.
You can consult all the information about routes, prices and schedules through the ** Rutas de Toledo .** website.
What if we let Toledo win us back?