He was also responsible for broadening the original denomination to encompass the Jacobean dimension: that strategic belief, almost magical, steeped in the feats of conquistadors and pontifical tensions. The revelation, however, or first textual description of this flower – considered then by the vast majority of scholars to be something most beautiful in appearance – is owed to the Hispano-Portuguese doctor, Simon de Tovar, a hefty trader in Mediterranean merchandise as well as merchandise of a different ilk – the type that was brought by intrepid sailors and slave traders in the hauls of ships returning from exotic lands beyond the seas first reached a hundred years earlier.
It was initially registered, in 1577, under the name of Narcissus Indicus.
The plant that has yielded such a beautiful flower was – along with a myriad of other products, seeds and objects hitherto unseen in these parts – among those gathered in the course of a natural science mission that ventured across the oceans at the behest of Monarch Philip II, led by the illustrious doctor and botanist, Francisco Hernandez. As though engendered from the red tinge of an indolent twilight that is steeped in the towering lightness of the rocky baroque façades of the Plaza del Obradoiro (1)*, gleaming in the glow of night, and filtering through the sharp clarity of the stars… Flor de Santiago is like one of those grand secrets of nature that alchemists endeavoured to unravel at the very dawn of science – an ardently colourful enigma, with its rhythmic plant architecture, almost an intimate melody of silence that nestles in the beautiful purple essence of its evanescent presence. Thus did it emerge, as though issued from the intangible folds of time carefully handwritten and sketched, to become indelibly etched in the mystery of that old city of soutanesque sombreness, through rain, and sun and stone, and stone and sun and rain, with voices and shades further shrouded in rain and sun and stone. In addition to the appellation by which it is most commonly known, it also bears a name that links it to the great western myth of Christianity, not to mention to the hordes of guardians of great valour who galloped with the swiftness of the wind across the well trodden paths of the middle ages. It is probably the most beautiful of all worldly flowers. The suggestive beauty of its incredible harmonious structure, so charged with colour, so fascinating in appearance, surges forth amongst us, from the remote horizons of the unknown, through the thick foliage of unfamiliar landscapes to become, today, the floral symbol of Santiago.
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