Burgos information
Moors and Countryside
To the west of the province of Burgos the moor
land spreads out, an extensive region with infinite horizons.
Lands of rich-taking that go from north to south, from the highlands
of La Lora and the lime mass of Peña Amaya, now on the
limits of the Cantabrian Mountain Range, to the meadows of Arlanza,
entering into the land of fields of Palencia. This is the traditional
image of Castile, the plains of Burgos, where, in contrast to
the poverty of the landscape, the greatness of its monuments stands
out, which appear in the middle of the moors from time to time,
behind a hill, among the humble farmhouse of adobe and brick sheds.
Burgos, a land of fields
If nature has been harsh with these moors of Burgos, it is also
true that this same harshness has forged the character of its
people, who have been able to achieve with their work what nature
has denied them. Hospitable men and women with weathered faces,
strong arms, as not in vain does the Road to Santiago run through
these lands. Some of the most beautiful churches of the whole
province are due to their dedication: Sasamon, Grijalba, Mahamud
or Santa Maria del Campo. Props of faith in lands of sown fields
that the sun punishes and blesses; where the poppies stain the
golden fields with blood. A different landscape, but all the same,
just as beautiful.
El Colacho
In Castrillo de Murcia and during the Corpus Octave the festivity
of El Colacho is held, an ancestral reminiscence of a pagan celebration
turned into something divine. Masked and dressed with a kind of
bright-coloured baggy trousers, El Colacho carries a horse's tail,
which he uses to whip the people of the village, during the "corridas".
On the Sunday after the Corpus, the village is decked out, placing
altars along the procession route. The whole farce symbolises
the heresy and curses warded off by the Eucharist.