Un pastor babiano se encontraba recorriendo los campos de su tierra con su rebaño. El día había resultado agotador y el cansancio empezaba a hacer mella en su ánimo. Debido a esto, el joven decidió hacer un alto en el camino para poder echarse y descansar durante un breve periodo de tiempo. Así, llegó hasta un lugar conocido en la zona como el valle de Santa María. En el valle había cerca de una fuente conocida desde muy antiguo. Los habitantes de la zona la llamaban fuente Esquilina, como uno de los más míticos montes sobre lo que descansa la ciudad de Roma.

Después de alcanzar el lugar, comió algo ligero y se refrescó con el agua que manaba de la fuente. Después del pequeño tentempié, decidió recostarse al lado de la fuente, a la sombra de un árbol. Poco a poco, el cansancio y el sopor de la ligera comida iban notándose cada vez más. El sueño le iba venciendo y, finalmente, cayó sumido en un profundo sueño.

Nada hacía sospechar al pastorcillo que iba a ser el testigo de un acontecimiento sobrenatural, por lo que su descanso fue relajado y sin sobresaltos. Sin embargo, en medio de su sueño, se le apareció la Virgen. Ante él, majestuosa, se alzaba la imagen divina. Montaba un borrico y se dirigió directamente al joven.

El muchacho, arrodillado en el suelo, no sabía qué hacer ni qué decir. La Virgen le explicó quién era y porqué se había presentado ante él. Sólo tenía que pedirle un deseo de fácil cumplimiento. Quería que fuese hasta la localidad más próxima para que diese la noticia: la Virgen quería que se le construyese una ermita en ese mismo lugar.

El niño, una vez que superó el temor inicial, exigió a la aparición que le otorgase una prueba de que realmente se trataba de la Madre de Dios en persona. La Virgen, sin inmutarse, descabalgó del borrico y se dirigió hacia una piedra cercana a la fuente Esquilina. Allí, situó su mano sobre la roca que, milagrosamente, quedó grabada con su huella. Después, se puso sobre ella, y la huella de la madreña que calzaba también quedó grabada en la dura piedra. Finalmente, acercó hasta la misma roca al borrico que montaba y colocó su pezuña sobre la piedra. También la pezuña se reflejo en la roca, quedando grabada su huella.

Ya no tenía dudas. Estaba ante la mismísima Virgen. Sin dudarlo, corrió al pueblo donde contó la noticia. Los vecinos, viendo las huellas grabadas las rocas, comenzaron prestos la construcción de la ermita que aún hoy sobrevive en el valle de Santa María en Babia.

Observaciones:

La implicación de la leyenda con la cristianización de un lugar de culto pagano parece evidente. La fuente se denomina Esquilina, uno de los siete montes sobre los que se asentó la ciudad de Roma, y los grabados recuerdan a las formas artísticas prerromanas, como puede ser la huella del borrico. Por lo tanto, parece tratarse de un lugar de culto pagano romano o prerromano que, posteriormente, fue cristianizado, hecho que se explica a través de esta leyenda.

Tomado de Leon.soyrural.com

Annie Bennett
The Observer, Sunday 25 October 2009
Article history

Secret Spain: lost in translation

In Spain if you are said to be 'in Babia', you are either daydreaming, unreachable or happy with your lot. In this remote corner of León, all three usages seem to be apt

The Laguna de Las Verdes, Torre de Babia, in Spain's León province

You may not be aware of it, but you probably spend a lot of time in Babia. Most people do, even though they may not know it really exists. You see Babia is a remote corner of the province of León in northern Spain. But in Spain to be "in Babia" means to be lost in thought, not quite all there, or even not where you're supposed to be. Leading Spanish writer Julio Llamazares, who was born in the province, puts it thus: "Being in Babia means having your mind in one place and your body in another."

Thinking it might not be a bad idea to get my mind and body in the same place for once, I set off for Babia to find out more about where the saying comes from. Setting off from the city of León, I tootled along the old road that leads north-west out of the city. After an hour or so – by which time mine was the only vehicle on the road – I arrived in the Luna valley, heralded by a huge reservoir snaking between the hills. The road wiggled around the contours of the hillside, past a handful of tiny hamlets, then the countryside suddenly opened up and I entered a broad, lush valley of emerald green meadows encircled by snow-capped mountains and I was at last in Babia.

It felt like crossing an invisible frontier into another world. I stopped the car and gazed across the fields, which sloped up the hillside. Higher up, on both sides a wall of carboniferous limestone was crowned by craggy peaks at more than 2,000m. The only sounds came from the water trickling down the mountains and the jingling of cow bells.

I turned off the main road and drove down a winding lane to Riolago de Babia, one of a couple of dozen villages scattered across the region. Sitting on a bench in a little square in front of the 16th-century Palacio de los Quiñones, which was encased in scaffolding, I got talking to a dapper man who introduced himself as Fernando Geijo Rodriguez. "It's going to be a visitor centre," he said.

The palace had fallen into disrepair in the 20th century, and was virtually a ruin by the Seventies, when a Madrid developer tried to get hold of it in order to strip out the more valuable architectural features for use elsewhere. It was saved from this fate by none other than my interlocutor, Señor Rodríguez, who then spent 20 years and a lot of money restoring it before the regional government took charge of the project.

"Fancy a beer?" he asked. I nodded and he nipped into his house on the other side of the square. As he was opening the bottles, another villager ambled up to join us on the bench. "This is my friend Amilcar," Fernando said. "Like the Carthaginian general."

"We're all in Babia here," said Amilcar, laughing. "Do you know where the expression comes from?" Fernando asked me. "That's what I want to find out," I replied, swigging my beer.

"Well, back in the Middle Ages, when León was a kingdom, the royal family lived in their palace in the city of León, but they used to come to Babia to hunt and fish. And when people requested an audience with the king, the chamberlain used to say he was in Babia, and that would be that."

A group of hikers had arrived in the square, and were listening to Fernando. "So is it a way of saying someone is incomunicado, like saying they're in a meeting?" one of them asked.

"That's right," said Fernando, "but there's another meaning, too. When the shepherds from Babia were taking their flocks south to Extremadura to escape the harsh winters here, they would sit around the campfire and think about their wives and girlfriends back home."

"And if one was totally lost to the world," Amilcar chipped in, "the others would say, 'Wake up man – you're in Babia.'"

"So nowadays," Fernando added, "if someone is daydreaming or has their head in the clouds, people say they're in Babia. And it can also mean just to be happy where you are, with what you're doing, like we are now."

Next, I drove to Torre de Babia, a village in the foothills of the Cantabrian mountains with a couple of dozen inhabitants, to see its 17th-century church. A man painting his gate pointed me in the right direction and told me his name was Manolo Cuenllas. "I'm 83, and have always lived here. My wife is from Robledo, the next village. In those days, you had to find a girlfriend nearby."

I pushed on up into the mountains, heading for Torrestio, which is one of the highest and most isolated villages in the area, and often cut off by snow in the winter for weeks on end. Paths dating from Roman times lead from the village up to mountain passes and over into the region of Asturias.

As I wandered through the village I came across several hórreos, rectangular wooden granaries on stone stilts that are a typical architectural feature of Asturias, but also pop up in Babia. As in the other villages I had visited, I had only been in Torrestio for a few minutes before someone started talking to me. This time it was Marina, an elderly lady who told me she spends six months a year here in Babia, but goes to Oviedo, the capital of Asturias, for the winter months. "You may think this place is remote, but at least you can drive up here now," she said. "Before the road was built, we had to walk."

Bar La Farrapona in the centre of Torrestio looked unpromising from the outside, but inside it was surprisingly lively, packed with a mix of card-playing old locals, mountaineers and cyclists. Although fewer than 20 people live in the village all year round, active tourism has revived the fortunes of the hamlet, and a couple of casas rurales (holiday cottages) now provide inexpensive accommodation for the new wave of visitors.

I was staying in an even tinier hamlet, Quejo. El Rincón de Babia is an old farmhouse that has been turned into a stylish hotel by Gerardo Ardura and Marta Soto, who gave up careers in tourism in the city of León a decade ago to pursue their dream of creating a rural idyll.

With lots of nooks and crannies both inside and out for sitting in and reading, and the river Sil gushing down the hillside in front of the house, it is a lovely place to stay, irrespective of how active or lazy you want to be. Gerardo is an excellent chef, cooking elegant dinners using as much local produce as possible. Although not a lot of fruit grows at this altitude, Gerardo used the plums from their garden to make a delicious sauce to serve with pork sirloin, and chestnuts to make a cake.

Marta and I walked up to La Cueta, a village about a mile up the valley, where the road peters out. It now has a population of nine, after years of being totally uninhabited. Again, it has rural tourism to thank for this renaissance, with a bar and a couple of places to stay having opened over the past few years. You can walk to the source of the river Sil from the village, as well as to glacial lakes, and the Somiedo nature reserve is on the other side of the mountains in Asturias.

We went into the Picos Blancos bar for a beer. Run by Estrella Morán, the bar is the focal point of the village and also has a restaurant and rooms to let. The old stone structure provides a home for four generations of her family, all represented in the bar that evening, from her 87-year-old mother, Regina, to her grandson Moisés, a boisterous toddler who is the only child in La Cueta.

Regina was dipping frisuelos – delicious sugary fritters – into a cup of thick hot chocolate, while Moisés ran amok around our legs. Hikers tramped in and slumped on to the wooden benches. Everyone looked happy; everyone was in Babia.