Having breakfast for a person condemned to death in Santo Domingo de la Calzada (La Rioja) is something very natural. And even recommended. But there is no reason to be alarmed, it is not strictly an act of anthropophagy nor necrophagy. Ahorcadito is the name given to the tempting classic sweet from this monumental town that has been made since the mid-1950s and has made a name for itself among Rioja delicacies.
It was the Isidro pastry shop who invented it. It was about honoring one of the many legends starring the local saint, who is said to have saved a German pilgrim who had been executed for having stolen a silver cup from the inn where he was staying. It turned out that the poor tourist had not done it, but that he had been reported by the innkeeper, angry at having been rejected. But the German traveler was hanged from the gallows. Saint Dominic, upon learning of the fact, caused him to be resurrected.
Based on this little story, pastry chef José Alberto Hernando decided to create a puff pastry in the shape of a scallop (the shell that identifies the Jacobean pilgrimage) in the center of which is a human figure with its feet hanging from the lower end. The most veterans say that even before the rope and part of the scaffold were visible. The filling is almond cream, a glorious bite.
As the decades passed, other pastry shops in the town began preparing ahorcaditos, and today they are one of the inevitable sweets when passing through Santo Domingo de la Calzada. Although the gruesome details of the scaffold have disappeared, only the hanging and the shell remain.
The legend of the German pilgrim is not the most famous of this town, which is popularly known as the Compostela of Rioja for its monumentality. Saint Dominic was perhaps going to be the lawyer of lost causes, since the most widespread story claims that a chicken that was already cooked and presented on the plate ready to eat sang, and that this was the saint’s way of demonstrating that the person condemned to death had been unjustly. Hence the couplet “Santo Domingo de la Calzada, where he sang the chicken after it was roasted.” The phrase has become so famous that it appears on most souvenirs and even in some of the slogans that serve as tourist attractions.
The story of the chicken is so powerful for Santo Domingo de la Calzada that inside the cathedral there is a cage in which a rooster and a hen permanently live. And it is not just any receptacle, but a 16th century Gothic style forging from the same period in which the Valencian Damià Forment sculpted the altarpiece of the main altar. It is claimed in Santo Domingo – a fact that is difficult to verify – that it is the only cathedral in the world that has live animals inside the church, although there are others that have them in the open-air cloisters.
Once the eccentricity has been proven, however, the best thing will be to access the tomb of the town’s protagonist saint, a delicately carved alabaster figure. Descending a ladder you can see the tomb. Another of the peculiarities of the Cathedral of Santo Domingo de la Calzada is that its bell tower is free-standing, it is isolated on the opposite side of the square. From the top you get a prodigious view of the old town and the beautiful Plaza Mayor. On the façade of the Town Hall, by the way, there is also an outstanding stone tablet engraved with the image of the rooster and the hen.
Santo Domingo de la Calzada is 47 kilometers west of Logroño following the A-12 highway.
