Stage Notes & History

DIRECTIONS: Restaurante. Ibarberoa, c/San Salvador (behind the church) Meal 12€. Open for lunch, closed evenings, except Fri/Sat in summer. Two bars, shop and a health centre.

HISTORY: Obanos hosts a mystery play on the first Sunday after Corpus Christi. The play tells the story of Saint Guillermo and Saint Felicia. The story is that Felicia and her brother Duke Guillermo of Acquitaine made a pilgrimage to Santiago. During their return journey Felicia announced that, inspired by the Camino, she wished to abandon court life and become a hermit in Amocain in Navarra. Guillermo was enraged by her supposed foolishiness and rejection of their life style struck out and killed his own sister. Guillermo was immediately wracked with remorse for his most terrible sin. He returned to Santiago to pray and on his second return stopped in Obanos and decided to live his remaining days as a hermit. He is reported to have wept everyday of his life for his sister. He was buried in the Ermita de Nuestra Señora de Arnotegui just south of Obanos. His skull is now, however, kept together with his silver Santiago cross in a silver head shaped reliquary in the large church in Obanos (San Juan Bautista). There is a tradition that watered-down wine is poured through the reliquary so that it may be blessed by the remains of this most contrite of saints and is then shared amongst the villagers as a shared blessing.

HISTORY: Just at the exit of Obanos is a sculpture of a pilgrim's silhouette at the junction of the Camino Francés and the Camino Aragonés. It was sculptured in 2011 by Patxi Aldunate and Pepe L. Tazón. It is intended to evoke the positive shadow that is cast by pilgrims who again pass through the town in ever increasing numbers.

DIRECTIONS: Between Obanos and Puente la Reina, the two pilgrim routes over the Pyrenees, one from Roncesvalles and the other over the Somport Pass (the route from Arles) meet.