Romanesque Chapel

The Romanesque Chapel is at once a recovered piece of local heritage and a private refuge in a time of fear. Near the cliffs, it stands as the achievement Irene pursued after becoming mayor: a chapel removed from its home decades earlier, kept by a Franco-era minister, and finally returned to the comarca. Its stones carry a contested history, but its quietest significance emerges when Irene explains why bringing it back mattered to her personally.

History and Displacement

In the 1950s, plans for a reservoir threatened to cover three villages in the comarca. The dead were moved from their cemeteries, and two churches were dismantled stone by stone so they could be relocated. The Romanesque Chapel was also supposed to be transferred a few kilometres away. The reservoir was never built, and the two churches were returned to their original sites; the chapel, however, was lost from the community.

Its disappearance was not simply an accident of the abandoned project. A minister under The Franco Era had fallen in love with the Romanesque building and kept it for installation at his pazo in Galicia. When demands for its return began to be heard with the arrival of democracy, the village to which it belonged had no remaining residents: people had either died or emigrated. With no neighbours left to press the claim, governments and mayors had little incentive to spend time and effort on it. The chapel’s recovery also encountered the minister’s heirs and laws that were ambiguous enough neither to protect the community clearly nor to condemn the heirs. The narrative presents the dispute as a legacy of the compromises associated with Transición española: an unresolved question of whose heritage the chapel represented.

Irene’s Campaign and Its Opposition

On taking office, Irene decided that the chapel should return to the comarca. She persisted until she achieved that goal, searching for a new location that would satisfy everyone. Her stated public justification was that the chapel belonged to the people, that she had promised to govern for all the residents, and that residents wanted it back. Its restoration was therefore not only a personal campaign but an assertion of civic responsibility: the absence of a living population in the original village did not, in her view, erase the community’s claim to its heritage.

The campaign also drew hostile press attention. Irene kept in a frame an article about the recovery written by Anselmo, a pro-Franco journalist at El Diario Montañés. The article mocked leftists for recovering churches, casting the effort as another way of antagonizing respectable people. Its framing reduced a heritage dispute to partisan provocation and showed the political resistance Irene faced. The chapel’s return consequently carried a public meaning beyond the building itself: recovering it challenged the idea that the heirs’ possession, or the lack of residents in the abandoned village, should settle the matter.

A Place of Comfort Amid Fear

The chapel’s history comes back into focus during a walk Irene takes with her younger sister. Fin has to remain in hospital for additional days because the doctors have seen something in his tests that they do not entirely like. They do not believe the signs look serious, but they cannot yet give a clear answer. Irene, who has already faced cancer with remarkable strength, is terrified that something may happen to her son. The walk brings her and her sister to the chapel near the cliffs, making the site of her public achievement the setting for a private admission.

Irene reveals that her campaign began while she was being diagnosed with a tumour. She had never told anyone that she became so determined to recover the chapel because she believed, somehow, that nothing bad could happen to her until it was back and every stone had been put in place. She imagined that God would not let her die before the transfer was complete. The chapel thus became attached to a hope she could act upon: while illness and its outcome remained beyond her control, the work of bringing the building home gave her a task with a visible end.

Meaning and Narrative Significance

Irene does not claim certainty about religious belief. What she does say is that the chapel calms her when she goes for the results of her periodic tests. Inside, she looks through its small window at waves breaking against the rocks. She is proud that it has returned to the village, and believes that if its presence helps others even half as much as it helps her, the effort was worthwhile. The building offers no assurance that illness will pass; its importance lies in the comfort Irene finds there and in the work she completed despite her fear.

Her sister sees both sides of her in this moment: the eldest, forceful, commanding woman and the frightened person holding on to whatever will keep her from sinking. That contrast gives the chapel its distinct place in the story. It is a monument to Irene’s persistence as mayor, a reminder of the comarca’s contested past, and a sanctuary whose meaning is not reduced to faith or politics. The stones she fought to bring back become a tangible point of connection between public duty, personal fear, and the possibility of comfort.