"Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me"

Heroes! We all have them. Personal and national heroes, men who mirror to us the qualities we most envy, the ones we fervently wish we had ourselves.  But heroism is like taffeta, it is not the same in all lights. A man devoutly admired by one group can be an object of passionate scorn, or even downright hate, to another.  Through Nathaniel's eyes we are about to meet the greatest hero of Christian Spain - El Cid.

"The hero is represented in the most extraordinary of attitudes: the head is thrown back, and the face turned towards one side; the legs in a sort of studied posture; a drawn sword is in the right hand, the point somewhat raised. The general expression is that of a comic actor attempting an attitude of mock-heroic impertinence; and is probably the result of an unattained object in the mind of the artist, of producing that of fearless independence."

This is Nathaniel's damning verdict on an oil painting of El Cid that once hung in the Ayuntamiento - not a very good one it seems.  It was presumably put there by those who genuinely wished to honour the great man whose bones rested amongst them.   But Nathaniel has no time for this picture.  To him it's an artistic failure, rubbish.

Only, is it just the picture he has no time for?  Really he is not just dissing whatever poor provincial artist attempted the likeness of Spain's great preserver: inevitably, by association, he is ridiculing the hero himself. 

El Cid statue in the centre of modern Burgos

This is an unpopular viewpoint, at least in the west.  The statue above was put up only sixty years ago, a mere six years before Hollywood canonised El Cid in the person of Charlton Heston. Like the film, it aims to show El Cid as the magnificent champion of Christian Spain against the Moors, and that is still very much how he is seen by many in Spain today.  But we soon learn that, for Nathaniel, El Cid's hero status is overblown, ambiguous,  untrustworthy - undeserved.

"For those who are satisfied with the orthodox histories of the monks, he is without defects—a simple unsophisticated demi-god. But there have been Mahometan historians of Spain. These are universally acknowledged to have treated of all that concerned themselves with complete accuracy and impartiality; and, when this happens, it should seem to be the best criterion, in the absence of other proof, of their faithful delineation of others' portraits."

The icon of one group will often be the hate figure of another.  I am sensing something significant about Nathaniel, which is that he loves Spain so much not for its triumphant Christian past, but for its lost Moorish civilization. His derogatory attitude to El Cid is the litmus test which proves something profound about him.

Deep, deep  down,  Nathaniel Armstrong Wells Esq. of Piercefield, Monmouthshire, wishes the Africans had won.

"She's the best of her kind, but her kind is not the best."

We are on our way out of the cathedral at Burgos, pausing at the door for a final, lingering, critical glance:

... "not forgetting to enjoy, as we leave the church, a long gaze at its elegant and symmetrical proportions. It may be called an unique model of beauty of its particular sort, especially when contemplated without being drawn into comparison with other edifices of a different class. Catalani is said, on hearing Sontag's performance, to have remarked that she was "la première de son genre, mais que son genre n'était pas le premier." Could the cathedral of Seville see that of Burgos, it would probably pronounce a similar judgment on its smaller rival."

Angelica Catalani, singer: (1780-1849)

Come again, Nathaniel - Catalani? Sontag?

Okay, Wikipedia tells me who Catalani was, the famous Italian soprano on the left. "Sontag" presumably is Henriette Sontag, a rival songstress Catalani damned with faint praise: her remark translates something like "she's the best of her kind, but her kind is not the best."

He's recalling the judgment of a famous but faded soprano who was already in her sixties as he journeys confidently through Spain, pronouncing so robustly on its architectural charms.  (We know, he doesn't, that the old lady singer he quotes will still outlive him by three years.)

So: the Cathedral of Burgos is very lovely, and if he hadn't already seen the one at Seville Nathaniel would have have been utterly bowled over by it.  As it is, yes, perfectly charming, but - he has seen better.

So we turn our backs on the Cathedral of Burgos and head across the hot stones of the square towards the Ayuntamiento.  This is the Town Hall, and in itself not interesting enough to detain jaded aesthetes like us:

 "The building, like other town-halls, possesses an airy staircase, a large public room, and a few other apartments, used for the various details of administration; but nothing remarkable until you arrive at a handsomely ornamented saloon, furnished with a canopied seat fronting a row of arm-chairs. This is the room in which the municipal body hold their juntas."

We are heading there because surprisingly, the Town Hall of Burgos is where we shall find the remains of Spain's greatest hero - a man whose fame reached even 20th century Hollywood.

We are going to pay our respects at the grave of El Cid.