As you can see, « per sas culpas », or Cantiga de Santa María number 166, is one of more than 400 songs that were written at the court of King Alfonso X “The Wise”, King of Castilla, from 1252 to 1284.

At that time, Galician was one of the cultured languages spoken in the country in court and high circles. A language that the King learned as a child in the lands of Allariz and Maceda (Ourense), where he spent a good part of his childhood.

As the Occitan, Italian and Catalan troubadours had done before him, the monarch used Galician as a language of prestige and international communication.

The Cantigas de Santa María, written in honour of the Virgin Mary, narrate the miracles worked by her divine intervention. They are presented in a way that could be called multimedia, as they are composed for  a poem, a musical piece and a painted image of each one of them. Such is their beauty that they have been referred to as the aesthetic Bible of the 13th century by the Honourable Mr. Marcelino Menéndez Pidal.

Basically, a 12th century work written in Galician, with a clear universal character that gives prestige to our language all over the world.

Due to its transversality, it is also widely versioned in its different forms, but mainly from the musical one, being in the repertoires of a wide variety of stylistically very different groups. It is even part of the original soundtrack of a major film blockbuster, Conan the Barbarian, where precisely C.S.M. 166 or “Como poden per sas culpas” is played at a prominent moment in the film.

Therefore, we wanted to continue making history, thanks to the history already made and in 2002, where we recorded with Luar Na Lubre this song from the inmost respect.

We made an adaptation to our instrumentation and with our arrangements and the sensational collaboration of the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra. For us the result was dreamy and this song was in our repertoire for years.

With the passing of time and the renewals of each season, the song was gradually taken out of the repertoire, but nevertheless, it always remained a very important piece of our work.

In 2022 we received a call from Ezequiel Mosquera, expressing the intention of using it as the soundtrack for the Tour of Galicia. A great honour that we were delighted to accept.

I am sure that King Alfonso X the Wise, as well as his entire court of collaborators, could not have imagined everything that would happen in posterity with their work, but it is undeniable that they left a great legacy that is constantly and permanently recognised from very different fields.

In this case, that of Galician cycling.