Since running another Aquilianos stage last Wednesday morning I’ve been thinking about the notorious Erik the Belgian but even in the internet age it’s amazingly difficult to find out information about the man. Even his entry in
Wikipedia is tantalisingly brief. And Erik the Belgian was probably the most prolific art thief of the 20th century… in the whole wide world.
Maybe he still is.
Stage Two. San Clemente to Peñalba (and back). A shade under 20 kms with about 700m ascent. Got into a rather nice walk-run groove and it took me about 3 hours.
Last Wednesday was a bank holiday for the grandiosely named “autonomous community of Castilla and León” and this let me sneak in a rare mid-week long ‘en. It is precisely in this part of northern Spain where you’ll find the highest proportion of historical buildings in a ruinous state and running between San Clemente and Peñalba there is plenty of evidence to prove the point. It would have provided a ripe picking ground for Eric the Belgian and his acolytes.
The terrain in this section is at times rugged and unwelcoming but there are plenty of signs that man has scraped a living up here for centuries. From San Clemente I followed an ancient cart track cut through the rock which rose above an ancient, crumbling smithy, its vast slate roof caving inwards as if made of paper. After about 45 minutes walking and running up a deep valley I reached Montes de Valdueza and its muddy, unpaved streets. Montes is dominated by its huge monastery which dates back to one of the first monastic communities in Europe. A scruffy handwritten note on the door announced that it may be visited only at weekends and that you’ve got to look for some bloke in the village for the key. What remains of the grand old building is in a sad old state but even sadder was the gaping hole in the hermitage wall just before you descend into Montes. This is the site of the Visigoth stone, the only surviving remnant of the original building and which had been encrusted above the door of the inconspicuous little hermitage. I’ve always stopped here to pay homage to the odd relic with its alpha and omega symbol and its strange indecipherable text. Not any more. Somebody’s nicked it.
To extract the stone the thieves must have made one hell of a noise and as the only road into Montes is visible across the valley for at least 2 kms it’s difficult to believe that none of the 5 or 6 permanent residents didn’t see or hear anything. It sounded to me like a perfect scenario for Erik the Belgian.
In the 1970s Erik was responsible for the disappearance of more than 1000 works of religious art from churches, cathedrals, hermitages and museums all over Spain. Many of them were taken from isolated little villages in Castilla y León, rather like Montes, where priceless treasures from other epochs were literally there for the taking. Eric was a trained painter from Brussels and a somewhat unorthodox art expert specialized in all types of religious imagery from the Romanesque and Gothic periods. Erik was the man for the job. The churches were easy to break into and the only difficulty lay in deciding what was worth taking or not.
But Erik always claimed that he had bought more than he had stolen and that he had often dealt directly with the priests themselves. Far from being a common thief he considered himself to be an art lover protecting the heritage from the sort of deterioration I’d seen in Montes. He frequently compared himself to Lord Elgin and said that he only ever worked with reputed collectors who were guaranteed to protect the articles removed. Then again he would say that, wouldn’t he?
Erik was detained in 1982 and accused of more than 600 thefts. After over 3 years in prison awaiting trial he was eventually acquitted of all charges. Unsurprisingly the lawyer who defended him became his sixth wife.
I doubt that Eric the Belgian is behind the disappearance of the Visigoth stone. Today he lives in anonymous retirement on the Costa del Sol and spends his time painting and tracing the works of art that have “passed through his hands”. This time he's returning them.
Two years ago I’d taken a photo of the stone. Now I took a second photo of the gaping hole. I’ll call it “before and after”.
A wonderfully wild section followed between Montes and Peñalba. By now it was drizzling incessantly but it was also warm. The remaining snow on the mountains was thawing rapidly and I had to negotiate a couple of streams which had converted to sizeable torrents. Here I came across the only other people I saw all morning, 3 runners training for the forthcoming events in the area. Once over the pass Penalba emerged in the distance like a misty mountain mirage. Peñalba is a showcase village where all the roofs are decked in shiny new slate and the streets are lovingly paved. The typed note on the door of the Mozarabic church gives the timetable for guided visits and its works of religious art are stashed away in the museums of León and the Louvre. The local government have pumped money into Peñalba and it shows. You won’t find Erik the Belgian and his mates around here.
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