Terra Cotta - Santillana del Mar

Terra Cotta, or baked earth, is a colour that varies from place to place. Now we tend to think of it as a pinkish orange, but the most lovely examples are when it has been weathered.

Terra Cotta - Santillana del Mar

Santillana del Mar, our first destination, is a medieval village in the north of Cantabria. Our tiny room is at the top of an old house called the Casa Del Organista, after a man who was the church organist and lived here for many years in the late 1900s. The view from the balcony is of a jumble of terracotta roofs at varying angles, easier to describe in words than to attempt to draw. The roads are all cobbled and the Church a fine Romanesque building.

The local Museum is a torture museum, not an ideal place for the young children we see there. Some visitors visibly flinch at the macabre items on display, many of which were used in the Spanish Inquisition to maintain the purity of the Church. I’ve seen enough Hammer Horror films to be blase about the Rack and the Iron Maiden, but there are some other items that are shockingly cruel, which include the Pear, a metal device used mainly for homosexuals or women who had become pregnant through sex with demons, which expands in the anus or vagina until the orifice ruptures. 

Clearly the concept of Human Rights was undreamt of in that era. What is really frightening is that some implements were used up until the 1970’s

Chastity Belt and Pear

We had a good dinner and slept well in our narrow bed until an over-active cockerel got all excited at various hours from 3.00am, and cock-a-doodle-doed through the night. HD