Pilgrims' Parade of Ponferrada: SOAKING IN SPANISH SPIRITUALITY

Every summer, under the first full moon, the tiny but immensely significant Spanish town of Ponferrada in northwestern Spain travels back to the 12th century as thousands of Templar Knights converge to celebrate the Night of Templars.

- Varsha Singh

Everything worked on a cue. Like a well-directed and much-rehearsed play. And if it were a play, it would perhaps be the largest ever piece of theatre staged in the world, with thousands of actors - men and women, young and old, and even some animals. Everyone played their part to the perfection even as it seemed that dozens of seemingly unrelated activities occurred on a stage that stretched across an entire town and the performance continued through the night, every night for three days.

This is how I would describe my first participation in the Night of Templars, the biggest cultural festival in northwestern Spain, notably the province of Castilla y León. I was at Ponferrada, a small, but historically and spiritually significant town and an important staging station on the Pilgrim's Road to Santiago de Compostela, one of the most important pilgrimages for Christians and which rivals Jerusalem and Vatican.

Though dating back to the Roman ages, Ponferrada became important in the 11th century as growing number of pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela, the burial site of one of the 12 Apostles, passed through this town and which led to the emergence of the tiny hamlet that got its name due to the presence of an iron bridge.

The legend has it that on the night of the first full moon of the summer, Fray Guido de Garda, the Master of the Order of the Knights Templar, returned to Ponferrada to seal a pact of eternal friendship with it and to hand over to it the custody of the symbols found in the holy land in Jerusalem, viz the sacred Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail.

Since then, for about 900 years, the occasion has been celebrated with the same spirit, though it has now become more a cultural than spiritual experience, attracting thousands of tourists from all over the world, besides the pilgrims, who have continued to undertake the challenging pilgrimage.