There'll be a welcome in the islands

 Welcome to March.  Also welcome to a day without a house, shack or wayside cafe.  We begin the day, alongside the main road.  Google will have us scrambling up the embankment, nipping over the barrier and so across the way and out among the olive trees.


Today is the Dia de les Illes Balears.  This day was picked because on 1st March 1983 the Statue of Autonomy was published.  It became a non-working day in 1999.  I’m sure they are up to larks over the sea.


It is Saint David’s day.  Last year the Welsh migrant community came together at the Plaza de la Mezquita in Benalmadena to, to quote Euroweekly, ‘to eat and drink Welsh cuisine, sing, dance, and celebrate the ex-pat Welsh community’.



This is what I have found out about St David in Spain.  The websearch answering to the call did offer me a fair bit of St David’s as a Pilgrim Route; the Camino de Santiago and ‘Napoleon Crossing the Alps’.  Hum Ho.

Not much going on. Not a lot to look at. 

Alright, some saints. The two earliest Iberian saints are Saint Torcuato and Cecilio of Granada.

Torquato was one of seven chaps that St Peter and Paul ordained and sent to Hibernia to spread the word.  It isn’t really certain if he was martyred or just a confessor of the faith. His major shrine is in Guadix and is probably to blame for the degradation of Baza.


Cecilio of Granada.  He apparently began life as a Jobbing Ecclesiastical in Roussillion.  He then evangelized Granada and became its first bishop and founded the archdiocese in 64AD.  He became the patron saint of the city.

And so the day ends. Let us hope for more tomorrow.









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