Ashes of Classical Culture that take us to beautiful legends and mythological stories of Antiquity. In the distance the mysterious lands of the west that the Greeks called Hesperia, the Hesperides, that wonderful garden that the Melides or nymphs of fruit trees looked after and that Hercules, the hero of mythology, came to do two of his works on the edge of the earth, perhaps in the lost Tartessos or Atlantis, who knows, in any case they spoke and thought then of the cradle of our ancestors, the one that the historian Strabo baptized as “Iberia.” Many were the classic texts that placed places fabulous like Hades or the flowery Champs-Elysées on our peninsula, the end of the world, where the sun didn't set...

Iberians, Celts, Celtiberians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths ... ancestral civilizations, ancient peoples that left their trail, their substrate scattered on the Iberian skin, on the island where metals were forged. From Tartessos to Hesperia, "Hiberia", Celtiberia, Hispania, Hispania Gothorum, Al-Andalus, Sepharad... melting pot of cultures that watered this fertile land of knowledge and wisdom. On these ashes of legendary kings such as Hispalo and his son Hispan, descendants of Hercules, villages, towns, cities, kingdoms and Empires were raised. Too much blood, between shadows and darkness, a glance towards the light, towards the light of the Ashes of Hesperia that germinates on wasteland and rises, under its ruins, a not alien world that feeds our horizon...

[In the image the representation of the Iberian warrior from Porcuna or warrior with double armor, from the 5th century BC, whose sculptural remains come from the Cerrillo Blanco site in Jaén].

There are many heroic moments, passages and characters during the two centuries that the indigenous resistance against the Roman invasion of Iberia lasted. Within that epic that began with the Celtiberian and Lusitanian wars, regarding the entry of Rome into the peninsula in front of the bellicose Carthage of Hannibal during the Second Punic War —The Romans of Publius Cornelius Scipio subdue the hard and iron Carthaginians in the 202 BC in the Battle of Zama. It is then when the Roman Republic begins its expansion in the ancient Iberia of the Greeks ... -, it is worth highlighting as examples of resistance the figure of the dux lusitanorum Viriato, the city of Numancia, and as the last resistant blow of the barbarian Hispania the confrontations between the Roman legions and the different Cantabrian and Asturian peoples, the so-called Cantabrian Wars.

The Celtiberians ready to revolt, despite some alliances, and the Lusitanians organized in guerrillas, knowledgeable about the forests and the mountains, were not going to back down a hand, they were going to fight to its last consequences. Between pacts, bribes, negotiations and finally betrayals that end in massacre stands its charismatic leader, a former shepherd boy, born in the Sierra de la Estrella, named Viriato. Many warriors will accompany him in his fight throughout the later Roman period, much blood spilled, Roman military leaders defeated and humiliated, among so many battles, the great victory of Tríbola, in the Serranía de Ronda, of the Lusitanian hordes in front of the consul Vetilio . The invincible Viriato who establishes his power in the Celtiberian capital of Segóbriga is a threat that must be demolished and liquidated. The consul Flavio Máximo Emiliano manages to defeat him, although the Celtiberians break their alliance with Rome and make a pact with Viriato, considered at that time the terror of the Romans, to try to definitively expel the Roman legions. Years of resistance until the desired peace, which will go through a new betrayal. The consul Cepión offers the three Viriato diplomats honors, perks and peace in exchange for the head of their leader. This is how they will kill him while he slept in 139 BC. The Celitiberian wars were also coming to an end. The last stronghold of heroic resistance would be Numantia, which fell in 133 BC. The Cantabrians and Asturians held out until 19 BC. The dream of Iberia passed away, the Roman Hispana would then be born, but that is another story ...

Celtiberian warrior dancer with arms clad in large bull horns represented on ceramic found in Garray, Numancia. These ritual dances are related to the cult of the bull, those horns and those dances related to the learning and domination of the brave bull, strength and fertility.

The famous Warrior Vessel was found in Numantia and represents a combat between two Numantine warriors. In the image we see the duel with helmet, caetra, sword and spear. It is one of the few graphic representations of the 1st century Celtiberian panoplies.

The horse is a symbol of freedom, nobility, strength, courage, wealth and power. Representations of horses have been found in Numantine ceramics, fibulae, coins, funerary stelae ... Linked to Epona, the goddess of abundance and fertility. Related to the warrior elites and as a symbol of the ostentation of power, they are very present in Iberia in herding, hunting and funeral rites. Endowed with chthonic and psychopompic aspects, it is linked with divinity and the afterlife, as well as with rites of passage and initiation, with the appropriation of equine virtues, with the image of the deceased and later heroized warrior, where the horses sacrificed for accompany the warrior on his journey to the afterlife.

The horse is a symbol of freedom, nobility, strength, courage, wealth and power. Representations of horses have been found in Numantine ceramics, fibulae, coins, funerary stelae ... Linked to Epona, the goddess of abundance and fertility. Related to the warrior elites and as a symbol of the ostentation of power, they are very present in Iberia in herding, hunting and funeral rites. Endowed with chthonic and psychopompic aspects, it is linked with divinity and the afterlife, as well as with rites of passage and initiation, with the appropriation of equine virtues, with the image of the deceased and later heroized warrior, where the horses sacrificed for accompany the warrior on his journey to the afterlife.

he teseras of hospitality constitute an inviolable and sacred Celtiberian document, they referred to an institution as typically Indo-European as the hospirium, which were verbal with a Druidic ritual with witnesses and the gods as guarantors. The hospitality pacts (hospititum) were contracts, pacts sealed between people and between peoples of friendship and hospitality, even transmitted from generation to generation. These waitresses or pieces of iron or bronze had many different shapes, both geometric and zoomorphic.

The horse is a symbol of freedom, nobility, strength, courage, wealth and power. Representations of horses have been found in Numantine ceramics, fibulae, coins, funerary stelae ... Linked to Epona, the goddess of abundance and fertility. Related to the warrior elites and as a symbol of the ostentation of power, they are very present in Iberia in herding, hunting and funeral rites. Endowed with chthonic and psychopompic aspects, it is linked with divinity and the afterlife, as well as with rites of passage and initiation, with the appropriation of equine virtues, with the image of the deceased and later heroized warrior, where the horses sacrificed for accompany the warrior on his journey to the afterlife.

The wolf is a religious and social icon for the Iberians, related to the stars, both with the sun and the moon. It appears on shields, coins, sculptures, tombstones and ceramics such as those found in Alcudia in the Elche-Archena style. This Carnassier or butcher, is fierce and defiant, he is represented hunted or tamed by man or linked to the rite of his transit to the afterlife world.

Silio Italicus relates about the Celtiberians: “The Celts came united in name to the Iberians. For them it is an honor to fall in the fight, and a crime to incinerate his corpse. They believe that the dead will go to heaven with the gods if hungry vultures devour the lying body. " The vultures therefore help the soul of the Celtiberians fallen in battle in their transit to the afterlife.

It is an anthropomorphic figure, a kind of horse with human qualities.

Anthropomorphic figure with a tunic and extended wings together with small details of a vegetal type that appeared in the Iberian ceramics of La Alcudia (Elche). The feminine principle is visible in intimate union with the primal divinity, the Great Neolithic Goddess.

A psychopomp is a being that in Celtic mythology or religions led the souls of the deceased to the otherworld. These Celtiberian fish appeared on ceramic plates found in Numancia, symbolized water, and as guide animals carried souls to the afterlife.

In Céltica Hispania there were horned deities, it is possible that the image corresponds to that of the god Cernnunos with his deer horns appearing in a Numancia ceramic. Although it has also been interpreted as a zenith wolf with open jaws or as the stag beetle. What it seems is that it is a deification of the Horned Male, related to abundance and fertility.

Libero, cry of freedom !!! ... The Iberians were lovers of freedom, they did not accept a leader, only in times of war and for short periods of time. While their value and loyalty to their bosses and leaders was recorded by ancient writers. The Greeks admired their bravery and resistance, they fought without fear and did not retreat even with the lost battle.

The image of the bird with outstretched wings of the Elche ceramic from Acudía has a mystical character, linked to divinity is related to the Mediterranean goddesses and chronicles of the cycles of nature, life and death. In some contexts this image of the bird is related to the blessings of travel or as a guide in the transit journey of the soul to the underworld.

Adaptation of the war scene of an Iberian horseman on horseback that appeared in the ceramic vessels of Liria in Elche, decorated with paintings and epigraphs written in the Iberian-Levantine alphabet. At the bottom of the drawing we have incorporated the bundle of arrows. Whose text talks about Zaldi (horse in Iberian), who is wild, indomitable and brave, with a stately appearance, rebellious and ready for warlike violence.

The last Iberian was a human comet that crossed this world until it was lost in the Iditarot, that distant place of which the natives of Alaska spoke. Its splendor left us with a blast of light that, like the ancient shamans of the tribe, deeply connected us with the forgotten memory of the true meaning of life and its mystery, its cosmic meaning. An invitation to reconnect with that ancestral past in which we beat in harmony with Mother Earth, which desperately urged us to strengthen ties with nature as keys to living in the future, to embrace and save Gaia - who reacts when we mistreat her. , and not be carried away by the drift of modernity that tries to dominate it to maximize material growth.

He wanted to be a wolf to live in unpolluted lands. It was that lupus that was part of mythology - where Palaeolithic man, fully integrated into nature, merged with the wolf in a rite of passage - turned into a warrior to face aggression ... Our archetype was a A rebellious, indomitable, visionary, free and wild hero who did not allow himself to be tamed and who fought tirelessly for life, forests and threatened fauna. The spell of his word, his energy, his enthusiasm, his vitality, his strength, his message and his codes captivated and transformed with his light a lineage, that of the line of the free, that like cranes stretched by the lash of the winter know, if not to return, at least feel, perceive and look out to that lost paradise that you dreamed of, so that in the Iberian nights the beautiful howls of the wolf will not stop being heard.

[Text and Design inspired by Felix Rodríguez de la Fuente and the masterful Cuarto Milenio program: “Felix, the last hero” by Iker Jiménez]

Tartessia or Tarshish is considered the first civilization in the West ruled by the legendary Argantonio and located, it is believed, to the south of the Iberian Peninsula, on the riverbed of the Guadalquivir. The echo of a wonderful city, rich in agriculture, livestock and precious metals (silver and gold), is collected in texts, chronicles, stories, biblical episodes, myths and legends. It was the scene of Nórax, Gargoris, Habis and also Hercules, who traveled there, to the Garden of the Hesperides to finish his work, killing the mythological king of Tartessian, the three-headed giant Geryon.

Explorers, archaeologists and researchers continue to search, unsuccessfully, for this lost kingdom of Tartessos, leaving those vestiges in the collective imagination of a unique and mysterious city, of a cultured and happy people, perhaps fused with the Phoenician civilization or extinguished by the Carthaginians. Although it is possible that the classical texts and the sages warn us about the cyclical history of the world... when the very Atlantis that Plato tells us, that wise and advanced humanity was annihilated through a great catastrophe, an implacable divine punishment...

Image: Bronze Carriazo (Astarte, marshes & estuaries' goddesses).