Slippery, lime- green moss

Slippery, lime- green moss lined the rocks and boulders of the pathway as it snaked up the hill through the inevitable Galician eucalyptus wood. I was alone. A few sharp sounds, a dogs barking or doors slamming, ricocheted up from the village below. The only other noise came from the sea, the wind and the birds. It was easy to conjure up the images of the ancient Galicians who had walked this path from Iron Age times onwards. The view from the top of the mountain was breathtaking. He Cíes islands seemed close enough to touch and , to the north, the islands of Ons and Sálvora lay placidly in a deceptively calm ocean. I could see the mouth of the Ría de Arousa to the north. The view stretched beyond that reaching, at least in my imagination, to mainland Europe’s most westerly point – Cape Finisterre, the End of The World. The Atlantic. Almost bare of ships, stretched out towards America. Inland, meanwhile, chimney-smoke drifted across the lowlands and onto the glassy waters of the ría.

How could one not be owe struck by the mysteries of nature, or be given to thoughts of deities and spirits, in such a spot? Wide flat slabs of granite, very slightly hollowed out, are scattered on the peak here. There is also a tiny, round, weather beaten eighteenth century look-out post of grey, lichen-clad blocks. The little mountain gains its name from the fires that used to be lit here to guide boats home. The flat stones, or ara, of which 130 have been found, were used as sacrifical altars in Roman times. The God worshipped then was called Berobreo. Like Santa Marta, he could cure. Archeologists believe this, too, was a place of pilgrimage. Some aras still bear inscriptions asking for the gift of good health.

From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet

Galicians are not real Celts

Galicians are not probably not real Celts. But they would like to be.Many, thanks to some sel-interested tinkering with history by nineteenth century Galician Romanics, are fully convinced they are. ?Most of the Celtism found by local historians in Galicia is utter claptrap. It is decoration to cover the gaping holes in that particular story’, the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno wrote in 1931. The independent tribes that injabited this area in pre Roman times certainly had, from the sea, contacts with Brittany, Ireland and other Celtic areas. Modern genetics has shown also, that here is a shared gene pool around the European Atlantic in which the people of northern Spain, including the Basques , share. There is even an ancient Gaelic text, the pre-eleventh century Leabhar Gabhala ( The bool of the invasions) which claims that Ireland was once successfully invaded and overturn by Galicians. These were known as the ‘sons of Mil’ and , improbably , took Ireland in a single day.

Whatever the truth of the Celtic origins- and they do not shout out at you in the physical aspects of Galicians or in their language – people like them. Vigo’s football club is, for example, called Celta de Vigo. In front of the Tower of Hercules, the ancient lighthouse overlooking the ocean at La Coruña, a huge, round, modern, mosaic rosa de los vientos, a wind compass, bears the symbols of the world’s Celts – including the Irish, Cornish and Bretons, Bagpipe players are here a common as in Scotland. Some even make it as local pop stars.

From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet

I found work teaching English

I found work teaching English. I studied at the city’s university and at the Brazilian Institute on the top floor of the Casa Ametller – a beautiful modernist building on the Paseo de Gràcia. Looking out of the window I could gaze upon what some Catalans would describe as further evidence of their ?difference’ . Paseo de Gràcia is home to some of the best work of Barcelona’s emblematic architect, the turn of the century modernist Antoni Gaudí. I could see the strange organic forms and Darth Vader – shaped chimneys above the sculpted, soot-encrusted stone façade of Gaudís Casa Milà –long ago dubbed La Pedrera, the Stone Quarry. Gaudí’ s Casa Batlló was next door. Its scaly, undulating, ceramic tiled roof represents the dragon slain by Catalonia’s patron saint, Sant Jordi. It was, and is, breathtaking stuff – a lesson in how adventurous and imaginative the Catalan mind could be.
I walked everywhere. Stepping on Gaudí’s jellyfish, conch shell and starfish decorated hexagonal tiles on the Paseo de Gràcia, gravity pulled me down to the Ramblas. It was a short hop from there to the narrow, dark medieval, washing adorned streets, tiny squares and austere, voluminous stone churches of the Gothic Quarter.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet