León (EFE).- Norman Sinclair is a 72-year-old German doctor and biologist whose love of botany led him to buy a flower shop after his retirement, and currently he spends most of his time traveling the different paths de Santiago planting a rose of the “Castell d ́Alaquás” variety, which “fascinated” him when he discovered it in Valencia and which he has baptized as the “pilgrim rose”.
More than four years ago this German pilgrim, of Venezuelan descent, the son of a Filipino and a Spanish woman, began the project to plant this variety of rose on the different roads to Santiago de Compostela, and since then he has planted hundreds of them. from Germany to the Galician capital.
As he explained to EFE, in 2023 he is focusing his efforts on the Camino Lebaniego and on the route documented by the German monk Hermann Küning von Vach with a guide written in his language in the final stretch of the Middle Ages.
Dozens of roses in the Órbigo area and in the province of Lugo
This week will be dedicated to planting dozens of roses in the Órbigo region of Leon and in the province of Lugo.
In this task he is accompanied by Arnau García Ferrer, manager of Viveros Ferrer, based in Chiva (Valencia), a leading company worldwide in the creation of roses through hybridization, and the journalist and writer Tomás Álvarez, president of the Association of Friends of the Künig Way, which advises them on the route followed in the Middle Ages by a German monk to reach Santiago.
“When I visited Viveros Ferrer, interested in buying rose bushes for my florist, a little over four years ago, I discovered this variety of rose that Matilde Ferrer had created and I was very struck by how striking its color is, which arises from a native white plant. from California (United States) and another from Seville with an intense red color”, explains Sinclair about the origin of this initiative.
The result of this hybridization, he continued, is a rose of a “singular” and “intense” pink color that Sinclair wants to convert “is a new symbol of the Camino de Santiago” that “over the years will become as well known and recognizable as the cross, the shell or the arrow”.
Nearly 6,000 kilometers along the different Jacobean routes
Sinclair, who began to make a pilgrimage in 2009 when he arrived in Santiago from Seville via the silver route and since then has traveled almost 6,000 kilometers through the different Jacobean routes, details that once about four years ago he decided that he had He planted the first two in Turégano (Segovia) to “fill” the path with this “unique” rose.
“Since then the ‘pilgrim roses’ have multiplied as if they had a life of their own and there are already almost four hundred planted in both Germany and Spain, 75 of them on Monte do Gozo, which are intended to be a symbol of welcome that Santiago it gives to the pilgrims who complete the Camino”, said Sinclair, who has promoted collaboration between the German and Spanish associations that want to disseminate and value the legacy of the medieval monk.
The manager of Viveros Ferrer has explained that his mother was the creator of this rose after a process of almost 12 years of work, and has specified that each year they carry out between 5,000 and 10,000 hybridizations of which only one or two end in a new one. variety for its conditions of color, health and resistance.
An almost fluorescent pink flower
“This variety in particular is fascinating and its choice as ‘pilgrim rose’ by Norman Sinclair is very successful because it has the particularity that the flower has a bright pink color, almost fluorescent, which is ideal for marking because it looks from a distance when contrasting sharply with the rest of the colors”, indicated Arnau.
In addition, despite being a plant with a simple flower, it blooms all year, it is super resistant and has an impressive vigor, he has commented.
It is an “exciting” project for his family, he recognized, and he thanked the effort made by the German pilgrim to make it known.
Promoting the coexistence of people and countries
For his part, the president of the Association of Friends of the Künig Way stressed that Norman Sinclair not only puts up roses, but also makes a pilgrimage promoting the coexistence of people and countries.
“The first thing he did in our personal meeting was to give me a letter from Martin Müller, mayor of the city of Vacha, where the fifteenth-century German monk, author of the pilgrimage guide, came from, in which he conveyed his gratitude to our association of Friends of the Camino de Künig, for our work in promoting culture and bringing people closer together”, Álvarez summarized. EFE