remembering Santa María la Real

capilla de Eunate, 

Camino de Santiago, España

My friend Pat & I walked out from the small tree-covered hill and stepped suddenly into a landscape of lined crops and dust fields. Next to a busy highway to our right, we recognized what had to be the famous chapel at Eunate, whose Basque name means “the Hundred Doorways.” 

Described by guide books as “one of the jewels” of the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, the chapel actually required a 4 to 5 kilometer walking detour off the main route on el Camino de Santiago. 

I might have been the first one in our family to walk the Camino, but since that summer (16 years ago!),  Michael has walked it, as well as two of my adult children and their spouses! 

The other night, several of us stayed up telling stories and remembering special moments in our Camino, like the morning Pat and I encountered the Shepherd (see here), and our 23-mile-day (see here). 

Looking back on the morning we visited Eunate, I remain grateful that the decision whether or not to detour came on the second day of our pilgrimage walk from Pamplona. In all honesty, if we had to make the same decision a week later, I know I would have been tempted to ignore the guidebooks and obsessed solely about the extra number of kilometers that it would add to our walking day!

From the woman living next door to the church, its unofficial caretaker, I learned that the origins of the small octagonal church are obscure. Its unusual shape suggests a link with the Knights Templar, whose churches often resembled the octagonal structure of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

Graves marked with scallop shells (the sign of the pilgrims) have been discovered between the church and its surrounding arched cloister, suggesting that Eunate was once a major funerary chapel for pilgrims who died along the Camino de Santiago. 

I was immediately drawn to the chapel’s simple and spartan interior. Floor to ceiling pillar buttresses stretched upward, as if reaching for heaven, and small marble windows let in only a gentle, soft light, making it breathtakingly serene. 

Only one image stood in the entire church, a mid-size statue of Mary that, I learned (several walking days later) in Najera, was known as Santa María la Real. 

She was, indeed, royally dressed, with a gold dress and a gold crown on both hers and Jesus’ heads.

Perhaps it was the way her left arm lovingly encircled the child on her lap. But there was something completely disarming in this Mary’s smile that instantly won me over.

Without words, with only a slight but captivating smile, she told me how much she loved her son.

She might be the queen of heaven, but clearly, Santa María la Real was a mother first.