What happened at Roncesvalles. To Roland. And to me

In my memory, David Ross was a large man. Something about him always made me think of him as a walrus. He was tall and broad-shouldered and the years had added to his girth too. A shock of white hair and a fine white moustache naturally reinforced my impression of him as a walrus. He also struck me as immensely old, which is a little chastening, since he was probably younger when I knew him than I am today.

He was, I should mention in passing, my professor of Mediaeval French when I was studying at Birkbeck College, London.

At the back, on the left, with a moustache:
David Ross and other Birkbeck heads of department, 1972-3

The conversation I’m thinking about took place in 1979. I know that because he gave me a copy of an article he’d written, Before Roland: what happened 1200 years ago next August 15? He was referring to 15 August 1978, but it was the following year when he gave me the paper. So it was in 1979. I was 26. Which is no doubt why he seemed so old to me.

What did happen 1200 years before August 1978? That was a battle in 778 in a place the French call Roncevaux. The great French emperor Charlemagne had come across the Pyrenees into what we now call Spain, though he would have said he was in Gascony, the land of the Gascons or Basques (slightly different name, same people), on his way into the Emirate of Aragon. An Emirate because this was the time of Arab control of most of the Iberian Peninsula. Zaragoza, the capital of Aragon, was one of the great centres of Spanish Muslim culture.

Charlemagne had won some victories but things hadn’t worked out too well. The Arab allies who’d agreed to let him have Zaragoza in return for his support had decided, once the city had fallen, that, well, actually, they weren’t that keen on handing it over. And he’d had bad news about enemies threatening his home territory in France, so he set off to get back across the Pyrenees. On the way, he attacked and destroyed the walls of the Gascon (or Basque) capital Pamplona, which had left them (the Basques or Gascons) more than a little irritated with him. Besides, they knew that he had a rich baggage train with him, along with some important Arab prisoners that their compatriots would like back.

And who’s this Roland Ross talked about? Well, he’s the eponymous hero of the first great work of French literature that survives to this day, The Song of Roland. Not everyone is convinced that Roland ever existed, but Ross seemed to feel that, on balance, the evidence suggests he probably did, and I tend to agree with him (perhaps I should say that I follow his view: he was an authority on the subject, I a mere student).

Charlemagne, the story has it, gave Roland command of the rearguard of his forces. The baggage train would be between that rearguard and the main body of the army. In that formation, the French headed for Roncevaux and from there through a nearby pass in the Pyrenees, back into France.

Well, most of them made it. But the Basques/Gascons had other ideas. There are various schools of thought as to whether they were alone, or whether it was Arabs alone, or a mixed force, that took exception to Charlemagne’s plans. David Ross inclined towards the idea of a mixed force. Again, I go with him.

The Song of Roland describes how they lay in wait for the French in wooded territory on the way to the pass. The ambushing forces knew they couldn’t hope to tackle the whole of Charlemagne’s army, but maybe the rearguard would be an easier target. And so it turned out.

Not only did they defeat Roland’s men, they wiped them out to the last man. Who, this being an epic poem after all, was Roland himself. As he lay dying, he at last blew his great horn, which he hadn't wanted to do before, to avoid recalling Charlemagne and the main force. Now, though, he needed to let his king know what had happened. Such was the force of his blowing that he burst a blood vessel at his temple, and the king's army heard him, even in the distant passes.

The dying Roland sounding his horn
This is not a contemporaneous image

His last dying gesture was to hold out his right-hand glove to God. That was the gesture of vassalage, of subordination, that a knight would make to a fief lord, his chief, and Roland, knowing his time in this world was over, was offering to become one of the paladins of the divine host, as in life he’d been one in Charlemagne’s. All very noble and chivalrous and heroic, as I’m sure you’d agree.

Meanwhile, the Basques/Gascons and their Arab partners made off with the baggage and the freed prisoners.

The trouble is, The Song of Roland is from the twelfth century and the battle was in the eighth. What Ross demonstrated, I thought with great skill, was that the poem had been heavily modified in those four centuries and, in particular, a great deal from the middle sections had been massively rewritten. So his article was about reconstructing the story as it was originally told, which is why his title referred to ‘what happened’. I reckon he did an excellent job of it. 

So why am I telling this story now?

Because earlier this month, Danielle and I, along with three friends of ours, peeling off from a hiking exhibition in high Navarre in Spain, spent the day in and near the little town of Roncesvalles. If you’ve guessed that this is the Spanish name of Roncevaux, congratulations. It’s also known as Orreaga, in Basque.

Navarre – or Navarra in Spanish – is traditionally part of the Basque nation, though these days the province is so heavily inhabited by Castilian-speaking Spanish that few Basque-speakers remain. Why, it isn’t even part of the official Spanish autonomous community known as the Basque Country. Even the high part of the province, where we were, doesn’t have many Basque speakers anymore, though the proportion is higher there than in the lowlands. Back then, however, the place must have been full of Basques. I imagine certainly enough to seriously disrupt, with a little help from some Arab allies, Roland’s trip back to France.

Roncesvalles today boasts a colossal monastery and a couple of churches, a museum and three restaurants or cafés. Part of the monastery has been turned into a hotel and another into a hostel for pilgrims. “Pilgrims?” I hear you cry, “What does Roland have to do with pilgrims?” To which the answer is nothing.

Interior of the Royal Collegiate Church in Roncesvalles

Roncesvalles is now part of the pilgrimage trail to Santiago de Compostella, or the ‘Camino’ as its fans call it. That’s become a heck of a business these days. There are cafés and hostels and restaurants all along the way, catering to the footsore pilgrim. As, of course, there are all the support services, such as guides and shops selling everything from camping gas to maps to sticking plasters.

Pilgrimage is today, as I suspect it always has been, a huge commercial opportunity for the shopkeepers, hostel keepers and restaurant owners all along the way.

Roncesvalles, whose actual registered population these days is just 12, is a thriving place but the crowds are all from outside, walkers working their way along the Camino together with the multitude offering them money-making services.

And of the great battle? Of Charlemagne? Of Roland holding out his glove to God? Frankly, there’s practically nothing. God, or possibly Mammon, has taken over.

790 km to Santiago. We managed three

Ah, well. We had a good day anyway. We walked a stretch of the Camino. Three kilometres, I think, at a point where there were 790 more to go. Clearly, we failed to get anywhere near Santiago but, on the other hand, we got to a wonderful restaurant in the next-door town of Burguete (Auritz in Basque) where we had a lunch worth a pilgrimage.

And that’s without mentioning the great dip into my past, to one of my favourite teachers, David Ross. Not to mention the even longer flashback to Roland.

Thanks, Roncevaux, and my hiking friends, for providing me with an excellent trip into old memories.

My hiking companions, leaving Roncesvalles
On the way to a fine meal in the next town

Spanish politics wishing us all a Happy New Year

Two pieces of news, out here in Spain, have struck me as the old year dies. They provide insight into how to form governments and just how much, or how little, we need them.

The first is that the country is about to have a fully constituted government again, rather than one that is in office merely in an acting capacity.

Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Iglesias
Eight months to learn that compromise works better than intransigence

This is a bigger achievement than you might at first think. There were elections back in April, which led to the Spanish Socialist Party, the PSOE, winning 123 parliamentary seats under its leader Pedro Sánchez. That made it the biggest single party while leaving it well short of the 176 required for a majority, but then the left wing Unidas-Podemos (UP), the party that broke spectacularly onto the scene a few years ago under the leadership of the charistmatic radical Pablo Iglesias, also had 42 and the centrist Citizens Party had 57. Surely a majority government could emerge, even without having to call on Catalan or Basque nationalists, some of whom would be inclined to favour the left.

That was not to be. First the Citizens Party made it clear that it was centrist in name only. Under no conditions would it support Sánchez into office. So if there was any sense in which it stood in the centre, it was with a powerful inclination to the right.

Months of negotiations between PSOE and UP made little progress, as neither side was prepared to budge from its entrenched positions. The result was that just seven months after the first election, a second had to be called, in November.

The results were highly educational.

The Citizens Party, which had been so outspoken in its refusal to work with the PSOE, was crushed. Its tally of MPs fell from 57 to just ten. Clearly, voters felt that if the party was going to ally itself only with the conservative Popular Party (PP), then it was just another conservative party and they might just as well vote directly for it. And indeed the PP went from a historic low of 66 to 89 MPs, although the collapse of the pseudo-centrists also had a far more serious consequence: the far-right Vox went from 24 seats to 52, making the third biggest group in the new Parliament. That’s a worrying development for the future.

As for the PSOE and UP, the two parties who couldn’t agree a programme after the April election, clearly voters didn’t like their behaviour. Both lost seats, though the PSOE not that many, falling from 123 to 120. UP, on the other hand, lost 7 which, considering they held just 42, is a much more serious blow.

The punishment handed to the two main parties of the left seems to have had the desired effect. Sánchez and Iglesias have at last found a way of agreeing a programme, including some interesting measures such as increased taxes on high pensions, legislation on euthanasia and climate change, and a reduced role for religious studies in public education.

With the abstention of the left-wing nationalists in Catalonia, which seems highly likely, it now appears that Sánchez will at last go from being acting Prime Minister to being confirmed in the role some time next week.

The message is clear. Pull together on the left and you can achieve some things. Reject all compromise and the voters punish you.

What about the other piece of news?

It seems that the Spanish stock market index, Ibex, ended 2019 up by more than in any year in 2013. Now I know that the position of the stock market is far from a perfect indication of the state of an economy, but it’s nonetheless generally the case that if the economy does badly, stocks and shares fall too. So the news about the Spanish index does somewhat suggest that the economy’s not doing too badly.

So my first bit of news teaches me that a compromise is worth making to get a government that can do some good, a lesson we’d do well to learn on the British left. The second shows that an economy can do fine even without a government for eight months, a lesson, in relativising the importance of government itself, it wouldn’t be bad for every nation to learn.

And on that note, I wish you all a great New Year.