Gargoyle photographer: the mystery of the stone reporter and aliens on the walls of the Palencia Cathedral (11 photos)

The Cathedral of San Antonio in Palencia is sometimes called the "Unknown Beauty." It is the third largest cathedral in Spain and also contains the longest central nave.





The cathedral's exterior walls are adorned with numerous remarkable gargoyles. Among the skeletons and mythical monsters, one surprising character lurks—a curious figure in a buttoned cassock, peering out from under the eaves, a camera slung around his neck.



Cathedral of San Antonio in Palencia

The story of the gargoyle photographer began in 1755, when a powerful earthquake shook the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa.





The tremors and subsequent tsunami nearly wiped out Lisbon and devastated Andalusia. Palencia was also seriously damaged: the cathedral's roof and cornices collapsed.



Between 1908 and 1910, the eminent Palencian architect Jerónimo Arroyo oversaw the restoration of the cathedral. Urban legend has it that the gargoyle with the camera was created in honor of a photographer who was killed during the restoration by a falling stone.



For a long time, it was believed that Arroyo honored the memory of his close friend, José Sanabria, a photographer who often accompanied the architect and documented his work.



However, an investigation by journalist and historian Julián García Torrellas in 2017 offered a different version.



According to his research, the gargoyle depicts Luis Rodríguez Alonso, another friend of Arroyo's who authored one of the first photo essays on the Palencia Cathedral.



The Rodriguez Alonso brothers, Luis and Albino, were renowned Palencian photographers. Luis later became a film director, although most of his films were destroyed in a studio fire.



Nevertheless, his documentary film "Journey Through Galicia" survived and was shown at the Ibero-American Exposition in Seville in 1929. His brother Albino also filmed Palencia in the 1920s, but his candidacy was rejected. He was too young during the cathedral's restoration.



Aliens in the Style of Alien

The cathedral's unusual details aren't just due to the gargoyles. On the outer archivolt of the Gate of the Kings, two curious figures confront each other. These aren't demons, but aliens.



The Palencian aliens appeared here in 1995, when architect Fernando Diaz-Pines carried out another restoration. By that time, the third installment of the Alien saga, starring Sigourney Weaver, had hit screens, and Diaz-Pines decided to capture the spirit of the era with a figure from a modern bestiary.