The ghost with black eyes

DAVID MAYOR

That Sunday afternoon, she pressed herself up against the wall of the church of La Magdalena to get out of the way of a car that was in the wrong place and as she looked up she saw a ghost. She definitely saw it. Made of smoke or something similar, as elusive as silence, slicing up through Mudéjar geometries but looking down, penetrating it with the gaze of a human being that has outlived their allotted time. Bright black eyes that have known how to linger to appreciate what goes unnoticed by common mortals and the absent-minded. This was the only thing she had that was human - those eyes - enough for anyone.
She was touched by fear, as if the ghost had pierced her leaving a vestige of something that passed through that place at another moment in dreams, and then she jerked herself away from the wall. There was a ghost there. The car was forced to brake. Then a friend who was impatiently waiting for the car that was in the wrong place to go past brought her back again to the noise of daily reality, away from the route of the ghosts. “Be careful! And get out of the way, please, you are going to get run over and they are waiting for us in the Plaza de los Sitios; and stop making that stupid face, you didn’t even see the ghost.”
They rushed off quickly and really happy, as if nothing had happened. The ghost with its gaze would go on turning the corner of the church of La Magdalena into a crossroads. Another car was coming.
Mudéjar tower of the church of La Magdalena, 14th century.
© Angélica Montes
Mudejar-style tower of La Magdalena church, with white and green glazed ceramic decoration.
© Angélica Montes
Mural recreating the old Zaragoza. Plaza de la Magdalena.
© Angélica Montes
Exterior of the Centro de Historias cultural venue, designed by the architect Ruiz de Temiño (2003), with a modern turret evoking the neighbouring medieval wall.
© Angélica Montes
Plaza de San Agustín and the Baroque façade of the monastery of the same name, buildings that have now been converted into a public library.
© Angélica Montes
18th-century spire for a Mudéjar bell tower of the 14th and 16th centuries. Tower of the church of San Miguel de los Navarros.
© Angélica Montes
Mudejar-style San Miguel de los Navarros church, San Miguel Square.
© Angélica Montes
In commemoration of the Peninsular War of 1808, Agustín Querol created the Monumento a Los Sitios (Monument commemorating the sieges, 1908), in the square of the same name.
© Angélica Montes
VIDEO  
Merry-go-round
in Los Sitios Square.

© Angélica Montes
VIDEO  
Los Sitios Square, flanked by buildings erected for the 1908 Franco-Hispanic Exhibition.
© Angélica Montes
Neo-Renaissance loggia on the main façade of the Colegio Gascón y Marín, in the Plaza de Los Sitios (José de Yarza, 1911-1919).
© Angélica Montes
AUDIO  
Allegories of Sculpture, Architecture and Painting, works by Carlos Palao (1908), on the main façade of the Museum of Zaragoza.
© Santiago Cabello - Archivo Tintaura
Warehouse of the old Municipal Slaughterhouse, now the public library. Built by Ricardo Magdalena to house the Aragonese Exhibition of 1885.
© Angélica Montes
Courtyard of the Salvador Allende Civic Centre. Fountain of the Good Shepherd, the work of Dionisio Lasuén (1885).
© Angélica Montes
Palacio de Larrinaga (Félix Navarro, 1900-1918) built by order of the ship-owner Miguel Larrinaga in honour of his wife Isabel Clavero.
© Angélica Montes
Monument to the 1978 Constitution, at the beginning of Paseo de la Constitución, by Florencio de Pedro Herrera, 1989.
© Angélica Montes
Paseo de la Constitución.
© Angélica Montes
San José Hermanitas de los Ancianos Desamparados (Sisters of the Forsaken Elderly) Home, by Ricardo Magdalena, 1882.
San José Avenue.

© Angélica Montes