by Tony Kevin
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On from Vilavella, and we were soon climbing westerly again, away from the A52, onto the old pilgrimage route that runs across high hills from A Gudina to Xunqueira de Ambía, seventy kilometres of the most beautiful walking country on my route so far, along the high treeless ridge of the Sierra Seca (‘the dry mountains’). The deep valley town of A Gudina was still shrouded in deep fog as we passed through at around ten in the morning. As we climbed up to the ridge at 1000 metres, it cleared to a perfect sunny but cool day. The breeze was fresh and invigorating. There were magnificent views along our path, northwards to the impressively high mountains of León with their traces still of winter snows, and southwards into the endlessly receding blue ranges of Tras os Montes in Portugal. The old nineteenth-century railway from Galicia to Zamora, now rarely operational, snakes along this ridge, in and out of winding tunnels. A few tiny railway-maintenance villages cling precariously to life along its track, inhabited by a few old people, and their sheep and goats and cows and pigs. This is a bit how I imagine walking the English Pennines might be, on top of the world with all spread out to see, villages and forest copses far below in the folds of the valleys, the odd shepherd up above, herding his sheep.
We were walking the old trail that poor Galician agricultural labourers took to in the nineteenth century, walking across the mountains to find seasonal work for cash in León and Castile, harvesting by hand their huge summer- cereal crops in the days before mechanical harvesters ended that kind of work. After that, poor Galicians were forced to emigrate to survive; large numbers went to Argentina.
Campobecerros was a pretty and relaxed hill village, with half-timbered houses and large gardens. I had a comfortable room in the friendly local pensión rural, the Casa Nuñez. The next day, alone again after Richard had left, I went back to bed for a rare sleep-in, and then set off on an easy fourteen- kilometre day’s walk to Laza, passing two villages on the way, Portocambo and As Eiras. From now on, villages would become more frequent as I came down from the mountains into more fertile and populated valleys nearing Ourense.
In Portocambo I lingered for a while in front of a lovely old church, Saint Michael the Archangel, reading the local families’ gravestones. They were building new houses on the outskirts of Portocambo, solid stone houses, leaving the old houses to crumble away untouched in the village centre. I liked that — the old life fading away as new life grew up alongside it, like a young new sapling growing up and drawing sustenance from a dead or dying tree alongside. It is surely so much better to conserve than to destroy one’s family history and memories. I was reminded again of how instinctively Spaniards revere and conserve their past, how they have so far escaped the tyranny of the market-dominated mind. And of how strongly Spanish people value home, family, their village, their local terrain. In front of the church of Saint Michael, I made a solemn vow before God to take better care of my family when I returned home.
Up and over more hills towards Laza, with dramatic upland views again of steeply plunging valleys and pretty villages far below, but also of distressingly large areas of burnt-out young pines — plantations planted at immense effort and cost on steep slopes, but now just blackened stumps on bare, ashen ground. The destruction from huge fires that swept through here a couple of dry summers before must have been immense: I saw workmen still harvesting burnt timber logs as I passed. Global warming again?
But could all these fires have been accidental, I wondered. I had read somewhere that a lot of forest-burning in Galicia had been man-made, deliberate arson. Had some local people resented the steady closure of their free highland sheep pastures with fenced, corporate-owned pine plantations, the closing down of their fragile, agrarian micro-economies in threatened mountain villages? Had some people resented the increased prices of their local land as a result of forestry-led bidding-up of land values? Did they resent the idea of their beloved hill country become simply just another supply area for Europe’s insatiable appetite for pine newsprint and chipboard? Maybe, I thought, the winds and drought might have been helped along, for every young planted pine tree in these areas to have gone up in smoke so comprehensively. Curiously, there were smaller areas of older natural forest lower down — of mixed oak, chestnut, local native pines — that had not been burnt. Were these areas naturally more fire-resistant, or had local people worked harder to save them, letting the pine plantations go? It was a mystery that I did not have time to resolve. But the thought crossed my mind that if forestry was again attempted here, a better way to go might be to replant mixed natural forests interspersed with open fields, planning it all in real cooperation with the local communities’ wishes, to re-create a mixed forest-farming ecology.
I then walked downwards into the sleepy hillside village of As Eiras, an obviously Celtic-derived Galician placename. There is no word like eira in the Spanish dictionary. I might mention here some peculiarities of the Galician language, Gallego. It is a Romance, Latin-based language like Spanish and Portuguese, but in some ways is closer to its Latin roots than Spanish is. For example, the word ‘lamb’, cordero in Spanish, is anio in Gallego (similar to the Latin agnus). ‘Dog’, perro in Spanish, is can in Gallego (like the Latin canis). Another interesting thing about Gallego is that the feminine article ‘the’, la and las in Spanish, become a and as in Gallego: A Gudina, As Eiras, A Coruña. I went to several village Masses that were held in Gallego; it is an interesting language to hear spoken — not quite Spanish, nor Portuguese, nor Latin.
I lunched in the As Eiras community plaza and picnic area, recently restored with the help of Galician regional government and EU funds. It had stone barbecues and ovens, wooden picnic tables, a children’s play area, and a timber viewing deck overlooking the forested valley below, all done in traditional hand-hewn wood and masonry style. In As Eiras, I also encountered a travelling grocery shop — a white van, its back fitted out with ranges of chilled and frozen foods and beverages, fresh fruit and vegetables, standby household items, and little luxury items. There was a good variety of products set out neatly in this little van, which was small enough to navigate narrow, twisting lanes between mountain villages. I had already seen many travelling bakers’ vans, selling fresh bread in villages — they have a distinctive horn-signal that sounds like an old steam-train whistle. But this was the first travelling grocery shop I had seen.
I presume that these are all government-subsidised services, part of the policy to look after older people in villages and to help keep village life sustainable. There is no profit to be made here; but, without access to visiting bakers and grocers and health workers, these villages, mostly inhabited now by older and poorer people, and younger artists and craftspeople, would soon shrivel and die. Once again, I was seeing that admirable Spanish community ethic — putting into practice the idea that, as a human society, we are all responsible for one another, including helping our oldest, weakest, or most vulnerable members, to maintain a decent life in their own communities and not to be carted off to nursing homes as their villages shrivel and die around them.
I walked down into Laza, a large, prosperous village in the valley flatlands below, with beautiful old buildings. Laza has a long history as a junction of pilgrimage routes. Alison Raju records that pilgrims coming from Portugal through Chaves and Verin (whether Portuguese or from Andalucia, Extremadura, and parts of the province of Salamanca, who had made detours through Portugal) joined the route I was taking here. In Laza I found a bright new municipal refugio, an energy-efficient concrete and steel structure. There I met two young fellow pilgrims, John from Ireland and Marcelino from Bilbao. John and I had an interesting dinner conversation, mostly about modern Irish political history: who had been the truest patriot in the Irish Troubles, Michael Collins or De Valera? John had made an interesting deal with his wife: he was doing two weeks of bicycle pilgrimage before joining his family on the Costa del Sol for two weeks with them on a beach holiday. He said he needed some
pilgrimage time, and that this was a good, pragmatic solution.
The next day, I climbed back up into high hills again for a long but glorious day, thirty-five kilometres to Xunqueira de Ambía. Perversely now, having decided two days before that I wanted to walk more slowly, I seemed to be wanting to speed up again: something was driving me forward. Sleeping restlessly, I got up well before dawn, taking care not to wake my sleeping roommates. I set out along a dimly streetlight-lit road, north-west into a deep, narrowing valley, through a village called Tamicelas where I met a farmer leading his mule-drawn hand plough out to work in his fields, then waalked steeply left, up and up on rough forestry tracks through pine-forested mountains, to the village of Albergueria in highland pastures at 900 metres.
There I had a mid-morning breakfast of coffee and a homemade Galician tuna-fish pie (which was delicious) in the remarkable Bar Rincón de Peregrinos (‘Pilgrims’ Corner’), run by a charmingly eccentric local chap whose cosy café is bizarrely decorated with hundreds of pilgrims’ individually signed scallop shells hung from the walls and ceiling rafters. We chatted, and after my breakfast he ceremoniously handed me a black marking pen and a new scallop shell — of which he keeps a stock — for me duly to write in my name, city, and country of origin, and date of passage. Up it went on the wall with all the others. You will find it there now if ever you walk through Albergueria.
More high country walking followed, then a short prayer at a huge wooden wayside cross on the crest of the last range, before travelling down again into a huge, flat, fertile plain, with a string of flat, horizontal villages running along the plain’s edge into the far distance at the foot of low, fringing hills. The rich valley flatlands were reserved for cropping. Once again, here was an example of the instinctive good planning of human habitat. How is it that Spain always does this so well?
In the first village, Villar de Barrio, I was directed to a hospitable café, the Bar Carmina, for a late, leisurely lunch. Carmina, a sweet and motherly lady — this seemed to be the favoured eating place for local widowers and bachelors — cooked me up a delicious caldo, a Galician speciality, a nourishing soup made from smoked ham, chorizo, white haricot beans, potatoes, spinach, and turnip greens. Served with Carmina’s crusty, fresh, village bread and local red wine, it was a richly balanced meal in itself. Replete as I was, she offered me a glass of her potent aguardiente spirit with strong, black coffee and fresh fruit to finish with. Gloriously content and at peace with the world, I stepped out into the mid-afternoon sunshine at about 3.00 pm, ready in spirit if not in body for my last fifteen kilometres to Xunqueira.
The yellow arrows pulled me forward, through all those linked horizontal villages that I had seen from the hilltop before lunch. I walked along prosperous hillside streets of substantial, two-storey stone houses with gardens rich in vines, fruit trees, vegetables and flowers, with red and white and pink climbing roses everywhere tumbling over walls and pergolas in exuberant, full bloom. It was siesta time, but children still played, and dogs came out to meet me. I was feeling sublimely, foolishly, happy. It was all so beautiful, such a celebration of human life at its best, and I remember hearing music in my head and singing meaningless ditties to myself as I walked — perhaps too loudly, as I got a few odd looks. Pilgrims sometimes have their moments of madness, especially after as good a lunch on the road as I had that day.
The track veered dramatically left, straight out across the flat green plain for seven more kilometres without a turn. I saw now that this huge, dished plain must have been a lake or marsh not so very long ago, perhaps even within living memory — hence its deep and fertile soil, rich in cereal and legume crops. I glided effortlessly over this plain as if on wings, the seven kilometres going by as if in a moment, then it was up and over a last low range of hills, and down into Xunqueira at about 7.00 pm, still euphoric from the magnificent day. I had been on the track for thirteen hours, yet I felt there were still reserves of strength in my body.
Xunqueira, like Laza, was another biggish village, more like a town, set dramatically on a hillside spur, with a magnificent twelfth-century church that was almost a cathedral, and little plazas ringed by fine, substantial townhouses in the old central area. I would have liked to stay longer and see more of this historic town, but I still had the driving urge to move forward. There was a rather rundown pilgrim refugio on the outskirts of the town, and that night I shared it with four companionable Spanish bicyclistas who had cycled in a few minutes after me, having ridden that day from A Gudina, sixty-eight kilometres and three days behind me. They invited me to come out and eat and drink with them, but I prudently declined, ate a little bread and fruit from my bag, and went straight off to bed. I slept the sleep of the just, and didn’t even hear them coming back in.
I had now come down into the rich south Galician lowlands: fertile, soft, rolling country, with many rivers flowing westwards from the mountains to the sea. From my reading I had associated Galicia with rural poverty, and was unprepared for the great natural richness and beauty of this land. Galicia’s nineteenth-century and twentieth-century poverty, which was all too real, was the tragic result of many generations of over-large families and over-subdivision into uneconomic small farms — microfundia — that could no longer sustain decent family livings, forcing people out as seasonal wage labourers in Spain and, later, when that labour market collapsed, as forced emigrants to South America. As in Ireland, it was true Malthusian poverty, with population expanding faster than economic sustainability. Like King Ferdinand, Galicians didn’t favour primogeniture, the harsh practice of giving the main inheritance to the eldest son and telling the others they must fend for themselves, when one loved all one’s children equally and wanted to treat them fairly. Over time, as in Ireland, their descendants paid the price for the Galicians’ abundant fecundity and love of their children, as farms became too small to feed whole families.
Now, with agricultural overpopulation no longer a problem in an industrialised economy, Galicia’s inherently rich environment is flourishing again. The countryside has a well-cared-for and prosperous look about it. It is being used well, but not abused, for mixed agriculture and forestry. I saw lots of new rural building and renovation going on, good stone houses built to last, and well-tended family vineyards and orchards and vegetable gardens in what seemed an almost Elysian environment. Southern Galicia feels like an Ireland that has been towed 1000 miles south to a warmer, gentler climate, a land well warmed and watered by the Gulf Stream, but — at least in this summer season — without Ireland’s chilling mists and rains. I don’t know what southern Galicia feels like in winter — no doubt it has its share of cold and rainy days — but I cannot imagine that these lowlands would ever be as bitterly cold as Ireland can be. In terms of a nurturing environment for human life to realise its full potential, the beautiful south Galician country that I passed through in this last week of my pilgrimage must be about as good as it gets anywhere in the world.
How Irish is Galicia? I found many interesting echoes of Ireland, especially in the Galician folk music: richly complex and melodic music for voice, bagpipes, flutes, violins, guitars, and kettledrums, played and sung by highly talented groups with names like Luar na Lubre and Milladoiro. There are traditional tunes with names like Crunia Maris (the Latin name for ‘La Coruña’) and Canteixiere, Devanceiros (‘To our ancestors’) — music that hits you right between the eyes with its hauntingly stirring Celtic harmonies and dissonances, the thrilling contralto voice of the female lead singer weaving in loops and strands around the hypnotic instrumental melodies. There are ribald bar choruses and tender love longs; instrumental jigs so like Irish jigs, yet wilder and more anarchical; strange Galician lyrics that sound like medieval Latin … this is music of the Middle Ages, brought back to life, and no wonder it is wildly popular among young European folk-music lovers. Galicia has big annual folk festivals that bring people and musicians together from all over Europe. I’m hearing som
e of Luar na Lubre again now on a CD as I type this, and I’m weeping again for the sheer joy and delight of this brilliant music … music that I first heard over dinner in a little bar near Lalín in Galicia.
And the Galician people are stunning — those slim and gorgeous white-skinned Celtic girls with their wild tresses of curly red or jet-black hair, their cool, greeny-blue eyes, Celtic genes gloriously mixed with blood-lines from everywhere in Europe — blond-haired and blue-eyed descendants of Goths and Visigoths and Normans, dark-eyed Spaniards from León and Castile, olive-skinned Portuguese. So many people have come to enjoy and husband this beautiful land of Galicia; there is such a glorious blending of humanity here.
Galicia is not Spain, any more than Portugal is Spain. But it is part of Spain, in that strange paradox that lies at the heart of the Spanish constitution, of there being many nations within the one Spanish Nation. There will always be a tension in Galicia, as there is in Andalucia and Catalonia and the Basque country, between the facts of being Spanish and Galician at the same time. In Galicia I saw some angry juvenile graffiti on both sides of the national argument. I hope it will never be expressed in serious vandalism or separatist violence, but rather in an energetic and creative resurgent regionalism. Galicians, especially younger ones, are justly proud of their language and cultural heritage; glad that it is recognised at last, after years of suppression, as one of the great Romance cultures of Europe. Realistically, Galicians understand that their political destiny lies within Spain as part of a liberal, non-authoritarian, non-constrictive Spain that is itself part of a liberal-democratic European Union.
