Discovering the Charms of Two Spanish Towns . . . and the Comforts of Their Peaceful <i> Paradores </i>

Ever since reading about it in James Michener’s book, “Iberia,” I had wanted to see this aristocratic village in the north of Spain.

I wanted to see its ancient houses with their “arrogant shields,” the “timeless bulls” on the ceilings of the nearby caves of Altamira, and the Parador Nacional Gil Blas, the inn that had been lived in for so many centuries by the noble Barreda family.

Although an annex has been added to the parador, we had heard that for a stay in the original 15th-Century town house, one must reserve far in advance. By a fluke, when we phoned from Madrid, a room was available.

We headed north toward the Bay of Biscay that washes Spain’s northern shore.

After Switzerland, Spain is the most mountainous country on the continent of Europe, and on the road from Siguenza, northeast of Madrid, to Calahorra we could believe it.

Mountains to the right of us. Mountains to the left. Gray mountains, tan mountains. Mountains jagged, or round like loaves of bread or brioche buns. One mountain that was sculpted on top with what looked like a castle, because that is what’s supposed to be on a mountain peak in Spain.

“Santillana del Mar had better be pretty wonderful,” I said to my husband as we left the autopisto and hit Bilbao’s traffic-choked road with its picador drivers and mesa-size trucks.

Even from our tiny car surrounded by trucks, the view of the coast was estupendo: mountains dropped into the sea, their slopes green velvet from the constant spurts of rain. It’s a gorgeous road, despite the loops and the trucks, leading about 25 miles up the coast past Santillana del Mar to Santander, capital city of the province of Cantabria.

We’d been advised to “take the cut to Soria,” which turned out to be a curving dream road lined with sycamores and eucalyptus trees and looking down on red-tiled villages.

The village of Santillana del Mar, surrounded by low mountains, was already 1,000 years old when the caves of Altamira were discovered in 1869.

It’s a proud village whose families vied to show off their noble lineage. Thus the houses--their facades emblazoned with colorful heraldic shields--are a walker’s museum.

“Even the emblazoned houses have an unusual charm in that their ground floors are given over to the stabling of cattle, whose aroma permeates the village, making it doubly attractive and homelike.” Thus, in part, did Michener write his impressions, and although “Iberia” was published in 1968, his enraptured description of the town and the caves have contributed significantly to the influx of tourists, who in turn have been largely responsible for the gewgaw commercialization that pervades.

The cattle are gone, their stables having turned to gift shops a-glitter with brass and tiles. Doorways of the low stone houses and streetside walls are festooned with the wares.

Aside from that, the town is charming. There are the escutcheons and the Collegiate Church--a Romanesque building with square, mismatched towers snuggled on either side of the facade and whose cloister, friezed by squat double columns, is one of the best preserved in Spain.

Inside the church, blessed in the Middle Ages as the Church of the Martyred St. Juliana (after whom the town was named), lies St. Juliana herself, in marble, on her marble sarcophagus.

The devil, a loathsome, clawed creature, tugs at her feet; an angel, at her head, pulls her toward heaven.

And the Parador Nacional Gil Blas is as massively handsome, I am sure, as it was in the days of the Barredas.

Its entrance hall, like the plaza it faces, is cobbled as it always has been, the tiny windows, set in foot-thick walls, unchanged. The floors, the stone now overlaid with foot-wide planks polished to a turn, creak as one walks.

The heavy carved furniture . . . the wrought-iron, overhead light fixtures, their myriad bulbs brightening the dining room and lounges . . . the chatter of the maids, like the patter of the rain, as they polish and clean . . . it is all so illuminating, just what we came for, that the curio shops are easy to forgive.

The lunch of hot bean soup made savory with chunks of sausage, the traditional tortilla (omelet) and the slice of Israel melon that the Spaniards love, is superb.

A big disappointment was not being allowed inside the prehistoric caves of Altamira, the bulls and boars and bison so wondrously painted on the ceilings 20,000 years ago.

Permission must be applied for months in advance, and is generally granted only if one is a qualified scholar.

But the caves’ reproductions in the adjoining museum are an arresting alternative, the prehistoric animals in their original, vivid colors undulating with the rounded or bumpy surfaces of the ceilings.

In spite of the restrictions, however, the tourists still come, pouring through the streets at bus arrival times. Soon after that they disappear, just as suddenly. And the little town becomes its “pretty wonderful” self again.

Rooms at the Inn

To make reservations at the Parador Nacional Gil Blas in Santillana del Mar, contact Marketing Ahead, 433 Fifth Ave., New York 10016, (212) 686-9213. Double room, including breakfast, tax and service, costs $150 U.S. during the high season (July 1 to Nov. 1); low season (Nov. 1 to July 1) is $120.

For more information on travel to Spain, contact the National Tourist Office of Spain, 8383 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 960, Beverly Hills 90211 (213) 658-7188.