In Olot there's an apprentice saint-maker with hands stained by plaster and papier-mâché who knows something most visitors never suspect: the town that today shows off modernist façades and hand-carved saints was, six hundred years ago, almost levelled by an earthquake. She proposes eleven stops through the historic centre — a theatre that burned down and rose again, a house dressed up in modernism in 1912, a church that got its saints back, the town's first religious-imagery workshop, the sanctuary where, legend has it, a bull found what nobody was looking for — ending in front of a tower with a heart hidden in stone. At the end, if your legs can take it, she invites you up Europe's most urban volcano. A short, flat walk through the historic centre, for families, friends or couples.
«Hey, you! Yes, you lot come looking for lava and craters. Sit down a moment, I'm going to show you something else. My name's Roser. I've had my hands stuck in plaster and papier-mâché since I was twelve, shaping saints that end up on altars all over the country. Here in Olot we're good at moulding faces. So good that when an earthquake flattened almost the whole town — yes, an earthquake, right here, six hundred years ago — we built it back up with these very hands. You've already got the volcanoes on the postcard. What doesn't show up on any postcard is this: a town that fell twice and learned to rebuild itself both times. Follow me. I'll show you the faces nobody looks at.»
📷 Wamito
· Public domain
📷 Nasobema lyricum
· CC0
Photos borrowed from Wikimedia Commons under each author's license, while we take our own.
