Dalí and John Lennon's Camino de Santiago
Salvador Dalí and John Lennon were on the verge of adding their names to those of Stephen Hawking, the Catholic Monarchs, Charlemagne, Philip II, Martin Sheen, or Paulo Coelho, that is, to the list of illustrious pilgrims of the Camino de Santiago. The Catalan painter and the British musician discussed the idea in the mid-1970s and planned to do it together—probably in the Holy Year of 1982—in an extravagant adventure worthy of their effervescent and untethered minds. This is claimed by Galician journalist and writer Antonio D. Olano (Villalba, 1938), a close friend of Dalí and confidant of a project that ultimately never materialized. “He wanted to gather a thousand hippies and walk to Santiago, with the leader of the Beatles at the forefront. It was not improvised; we had everything organized. But Lennon was killed, and Dalí lost all interest,” says Olano, who recounts the story in one of the chapters of his memoir *La Gran Vía se ríe*, published last year.
The mere idea that this pilgrimage could have taken place stirs all the wistful sighs of what might have been. Two of the greatest and most media-centric cultural figures of the 20th century together in the ultimate Galician cultural icon. Surrounded by hordes of hippies who, despite societal misunderstanding, spread their way of life across Europe. Supposedly, they would find a completely spiritual dimension to their existence here. And all of this with two key backdrops: on one side, the efforts that Father Elías Valiña had been making since the 1960s to internationally promote the Jacobean Route; and on the other, the atmosphere of openness during Spain’s transition period, which placed the country under the world’s curious gaze. A thousand advertising campaigns could not have achieved such an impact.
The origin of it all can be traced back to 1957. That year, Dalí painted *Santiago el Grande*, a monumental work depicting Apostle James on his white horse approaching God. The artist confessed at the time that he felt “an existential shiver: the shiver of the unity of the homeland” while creating it. Olano, his friend, points out that this painting marked a return of the painter to religious fervour. This was one reason why the 1969 release of Luis Buñuel’s film *La Vía Láctea* provoked his reaction. The film criticized the heresies of Christianity and was set on the Camino de Santiago. Dalí felt he had to respond to the audacity of Buñuel, his former friend with whom he had made the films *Un Chien Andalou* and *L'Age d'Or*, a friendship that had completely fractured over time. And therein lies the other reason, possibly the most important one.
The response to Buñuel’s audacity was clear: to revitalize the idea of the Camino de Santiago and offer it to young people as a spiritual revelation. In his book, Antonio D. Olano quotes Dalí’s statements about the plan, which are eloquent: “Although I put Santiago into orbit, I never left the launch pad to make a pilgrimage to his tomb. I will do it properly when I lead at least a hundred hippies converted to the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion.” With this, the artist brought Lennon into the story (“I am in contact with John, who wishes to make the pilgrimage”) and offered his particular view on contemporary cinema, ironically commenting on his position: “All new films that try to represent youth are more or less anarchic, anti-religious, which is a good way to be religious. Take Buñuel with *La Vía Láctea*, a pre-mystical film. He could become a priest any day now. One of these days, Buñuel will take religious orders.”
These statements are undated, but Olano places the conversations between Lennon and Dalí on the subject in the mid-1970s, several years after the release of *La Vía Láctea* or *Teorema* by Pasolini, another film against which their pilgrimage sought to rebel. “Dalí was a genius, but he was incredibly slow. He used to say that Dalí’s matters, like those of the palace, move slowly. And in this case, it moved so slowly that it could never happen,” explains Olano, recalling how, on Dalí’s orders, he sent several telegrams to the Beatles’ leader: “I sent two or three telegrams. We were at his house in Cadaqués, and I went to the post office and paid for them out of my own pocket,” he notes, pointing out another eccentricity of the artist: “It was all just a formality from Dalí because Dalí and Lennon talked on the phone whenever they wanted. They didn’t need telegrams, but of course, Dalí was Dalí. Lennon didn’t respond via telegram but by phone.”
A meeting of geniuses
The relationship between Salvador Dalí and John Lennon went back to when The Beatles were astounding the world. Olano claims the artist met the Fab Four in London. Writer Javier Pérez Andújar mentions in his book *Salvador Dalí a la conquista de lo irracional* that he even sold them a hair from his moustache for $5,000. However, the most famous meeting was in Amsterdam in 1969. Four days after Lennon and Yoko Ono were married in Gibraltar, the couple had lunch with Dalí during their *Bed-In* peace campaign, famous for hosting journalists in bed. Pérez Andújar, an expert on Dalí’s pop side, claims John and Yoko aspired to have the Catalan join their anti-military cause. Dalí countered with a proposition as opposite as it was provocative: for them to participate in his particular apology for war.
They later found more understanding, perhaps because Dalí, ever-opportunistic, saw the value in it. “He knew perfectly well that the Beatles had been the kings of the hippies,” comments Olano. Dalí knew them well. In fact, many hippies were invited to his house in Portlligat, to the delight of both him and his wife Gala, and the young visitors were fascinated by their charisma. It is said that in some cases, their admiration reached such levels that some even swore by Salvador Dalí, giving the painter a quasi-sacred dimension.
However, behind closed doors, he called them “funereal drug addicts” and rejected their philosophy of life. Dalí saw in the hippie mysticism an interesting path leading in the wrong direction. The straight path, he believed, could be found in their pilgrimage. “They give up drugs because it does not yield good health results—they are in deep meditation and go to see priests in India. What young people dislike are the current priests dressed in black, the traditional priests,” said Dalí, always opposed to drug use.
Lennon often appealed to religion as well. Although he created a major scandal in the U.S. by saying, “We’re more popular than Jesus now,” he later stated things like: “We try to make the message of Jesus Christ contemporary. We want him to win. What would he have done if he had access to ads, records, movies, television, and newspapers? The miracle is communication. Let’s use it.” Moreover, in his last album, *Double Fantasy* (1980), he included a song titled *Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)* dedicated to his son Sean. Verses like “Beautiful boy / Before you go to sleep / Say a little prayer / Every day in every way” speak for themselves.
All of this fit into Dalí’s postmodern vision for the march to Santiago. With an artistic-religious approach, the pilgrimage would start from the Prado Museum. There, they would pay homage to Velázquez, one of the Catalan’s most revered painters. Then, they would proceed down the Gran Vía to make a stop at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ciudad Universitaria. From there, they would take the A Coruña highway.
A parallel legend
As noted earlier, Olano claims Lennon’s death put an end to it all. But among Lennon’s fans, another version circulates. With one foot in biography and another in fiction, it is recounted by Jordi Soler in his book *Salvador Dalí y la más hermosa de las chicas ye-ye*. He claims that in 1970, Dalí wrote a letter in his own handwriting with his proposal: to set off together on a bus to Santiago, creating a work that was part song, part painting. According to Soler, one of the hippies who loitered around the painter’s house offered to take it to the mailbox but, aware of its value, never did. Apparently, he kept it for years to sell it for profit. Later, he sold it for thousands of pounds at an auction house. The story “is just one of the outcomes that project could have had,” as the author notes. This has not stopped it from spreading as fact, with bloggers even imagining how that hybrid work might have unfolded.
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