Dalí and John Lennon's Camino de Santiago
Salvador Dalí and John Lennon nearly joined their names to those of Stephen Hawking, the Catholic Monarchs, Charlemagne, Philip II, Martin Sheen or Paulo Coelho —in other words, to the list of illustrious pilgrims of the Camino de Santiago. The Catalan painter and the British musician discussed the idea in the mid-seventies and planned to undertake it together —probably in the Holy Year of 1982— as part of an extravagant adventure worthy of effervescent, free-spirited minds like theirs. This is stated by Galician journalist and writer Antonio D. Olano (Villalba, 1938), a close friend of Dalí and confidant of a project that ultimately never materialised. “He wanted to gather a thousand hippies and walk to Santiago, with the leader of the Beatles at the head. It was not improvised; we had everything organised. But Lennon was killed, and he lost all interest,” Olano explains, recounting the episode in one of the chapters of his memoir *La Gran Vía se ríe*, published last year.
The mere idea that such a pilgrimage might have taken place fuels endless nostalgia for what could have been. Two of the greatest and most media-relevant cultural figures of the twentieth century together at Galicia’s foremost cultural symbol. Surrounded by hordes of hippies spreading their way of life across Europe despite social incomprehension. Supposedly, they would have found here a profoundly spiritual dimension to their existence. And all of this unfolding against two backdrops: on the one hand, the efforts that priest Elías Valiña had been making since the sixties to promote the Camino internationally; on the other, the climate of openness during the Spanish transition, which placed Spain under the world’s curious gaze. A thousand publicity campaigns could not have achieved greater impact.
The origin of it all can be traced to 1957. That year Dalí painted *Santiago el Grande*, a monumental work depicting the Apostle James on his white horse approaching God. The artist confessed that he had felt “an existential shiver: the shiver of the unity of the homeland.” Olano notes that the painting reflected a return to religious fervour. This was one of the reasons Dalí reacted strongly to the release of Luis Buñuel’s film *La Vía Láctea* in 1969. The film criticised the heresies of Christianity and was set along the Camino de Santiago. Dalí felt compelled to counter Buñuel’s boldness, despite having once been his close friend and collaborator in *Un perro andaluz* and *L’Âge d’Or*, a relationship that had fully deteriorated over time. This was the other reason behind the plan —possibly the most important.
The response to Buñuel’s provocation was clear: revitalise the idea of the Camino de Santiago and offer it to young people as a spiritual revelation. In his book, Olano quotes Dalí’s striking words about the plan: “Although I launched Santiago into orbit, I never left the launchpad to walk to his tomb. I will do it properly when I lead at least one hundred hippies converted to the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman faith.” Having said this, the artist brings Lennon into the story (“I am in contact with John, who wishes to make the pilgrimage”) and gives his own view of contemporary cinema, adding irony: “All the new films that try to portray youth are more or less anarchic, anti-religious, which is a good way of being religious. There you have Buñuel with *La Vía Láctea*, a pre-mystical film. He could become a priest any day now. The least expected day Buñuel will take holy orders.”
These statements are undated, but Olano places the discussions between Lennon and Dalí in the mid-seventies, several years after the release of *La Vía Láctea* or Passolini’s *Teorema*, another film against which their planned pilgrimage sought to rebel. “Dalí was a genius but tremendously slow. He used to say that Dalí’s things, like palace matters, move slowly. And it happened that in this case it moved so slowly that it could never be carried out,” Olano explains, recalling how he sent several telegrams to the Beatles’ leader on Dalí’s behalf: “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 yet another eccentricity of the artist: “It was all just a formality of Dalí, because Dalí and Lennon spoke on the phone whenever they wanted. They didn’t need telegrams but, of course, Dalí was Dalí. Lennon did not reply through that medium, but by phone.”
Encounter between geniuses
The relationship between Salvador Dalí and John Lennon went back to the time when The Beatles astonished the world. Olano claims that the artist met the Fab Four in London. Writer Javier Pérez Andújar, in his book *Salvador Dalí a la conquista de lo irracional*, even states that Dalí sold them a hair from his moustache for 5,000 dollars. In any case, the most famous meeting took place in Amsterdam in 1969. Four days after Lennon and Yoko Ono married in Gibraltar, the couple had lunch with Dalí during their “Bed-In” peace campaign, known for receiving journalists in bed. Pérez Andújar, an expert on Dalí’s pop side, believes that John and Yoko hoped the Catalan artist would join their anti-military cause. He counterattacked with an opposite and provocative proposition: that they participate in his own advocacy of war.
Later, their understanding grew —perhaps because Dalí, always timely and often opportunistic, was interested in cultivating it. “He knew perfectly well that the Beatles had been the kings of the hippies,” Olano says. Dalí knew them well. In fact, many hippies were invited to his house in Portlligat for his and Gala’s amusement, and the young visitors were fascinated by their charisma. It is said that in some cases the devotion reached such extremes that some even “swore by Salvador Dalí,” giving the painter an almost sacred aura.
However, behind closed doors he called them “funereal drug addicts” and rejected their lifestyle. Dalí saw in hippie mysticism an interesting path headed in the wrong direction. The straight path, he believed, could be found on the pilgrimage. “They give up drugs because they are not good for their health,” Dalí insisted, always opposed to narcotics. “They are deep in meditation and go to see priests in India. What young people don’t like are today’s priests dressed in black, the traditional clergy.”
Lennon also referred to religion often. Although he once caused a major scandal in the US by saying, “Right now we are more famous than Jesus,” he later stated things such as: “We try to make Jesus Christ’s message contemporary. We want him to win. What would he have done if he had had access to ads, records, films, television and newspapers? The miracle is communication. Let’s use it.” Furthermore, in his last album, *Double Fantasy* (1980), he included a song titled *Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)* dedicated to his son Sean, with lines such as: “Beautiful boy / Before you go to sleep / Say a little prayer / Every day in every way,” which speak for themselves.
All this fit within the post-modern vision Dalí intended to give the march to Santiago. With an artistic-religious approach, they would start at the Prado Museum. There they would pay homage to Velázquez, one of the painter’s greatest idols. Then they would take Gran Vía and stop at the Museum of Contemporary Art at Ciudad Universitaria. From there, they would follow the road to A Coruña.
Parallel legend
As mentioned earlier, Olano maintains that Lennon’s death put an end to the project. But in the universe of Lennon fans, another version circulates. With one foot in biography and the other in fiction, Jordi Soler includes it in his book *Salvador Dalí y la más hermosa de las chicas ye-ye*. He writes that in 1970 Dalí drafted a handwritten letter with his proposal: to set off together by bus towards Santiago, creating a work halfway between song and painting. According to Soler, one of the hippies who frequently visited the painter’s home offered to mail the letter, but aware of its value, he never did. Apparently, he kept it for years in hopes of profiting from it. Later, he sold it for thousands of pounds at an auction house. The story “is just one of the possible endings that project could have had,” the author notes. This has not prevented it from spreading as truth, and even bloggers have imagined how this hybrid work might have unfolded.
Would you like to book your Camino de Santiago?