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IN COD'S COUNTRY
On Spain's Galician coast lies an anicent land shaped by mountains, the fishery... and the hand of God.

Text: ALBERTO MANGUEL

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After God finished creating the world in six days (as Genesis tells us), he laid down to rest on the seventh and pressed his hand on the Atlantic coast of Spain. The indentations of the Maker’s fingers formed what the locals called the Rías Bajas, low fiordlike bays that allow the ocean to reach inland. The holy thumb opened the Ría de Corcubión to the north; the other fingers furrowed the Ría de Muros y Noia, the Ría de Arousa, the Ría de Pontevedra and lastly the smaller and southernmost Ría de Vigo. The legend may stretch poetic licence, but for the inhabitants there is no doubt that Galicia was marked by the hand of God and is old as time itself.

Galicia has always been, in the popular imagination, one of the wildest and most mysterious corners of Spain. Though the Middle Ages granted the northern Galician city Santiago de Compostela (St. James the Apostle) miraculous fame since the discovery of the saint’s remains in 813, the rest of Galicia never acquired the historical prestige of Castile or the folkloric appeal of Andalucía. In my Buenos Aires childhood, I mainly associated Galicia with the Spanish immigrants who had arrived in Argentina in the early 20th century. (All Spaniards were known to us as gallegos or Galicians.) As a Canadian adult, Galicia merely conjured up the much-publicized fishing wars. Even my acquaintance with a few of Galicia’s major writers – the poet Rosalía de Castro, the playwright Ramón del Valle-Inclán, the novelist Manuel Rivas – had not revealed to me the full beauty of this region of rugged coastlines, quiet beaches, magnificent mountain roads and severe and dignified architecture.

Not that all these received notions are untrue. It is certain, for instance, that the sea is central to Galician identity. The cod, basic in the region’s cuisine, is present everywhere, and every town has a fish market that hospitably allows vendors of other produce to display their goods under the same roof. Today, because of the strict fishing regulations that attempt to limit the depletion of cod worldwide, for several months in the year, Galician fishmongers sell cod caught in Norway or Iceland. And yet the reputation of certain towns for the quality of their cod holds fast.

The town of Cambados, in the very centre of the Rías Bajas, is famous for selling "the best cod in Galicia." The Cambados market begins to stir at dawn. By seven in the morning, the stalls are in full activity, the cod carefully divided into cuts and sizes as meticulously displayed as diamonds. Cod is sold fresh (abadejo) or salted (bacalhau), the latter by far the most popular and traditional; and it is mainly bacalhau that is seen on the marble counters, glittering vanilla-coloured in its dark wooden boxes. From the whole "sheet" of cod to just the delicate cococha (throat), the choice varies in quality and price according to the length and thickness of the fish. Every recipe requires that the bacalhau be desalted for 24 hours and the water changed at least four times during the process. Then it is stewed with potatoes and tomatoes in broth (caldeirada), baked with milk and raisins or fried with onions and garlic, and served with a green parsley sauce (salsa verde) or with a sprinkling of chopped hard-boiled eggs.

Cambados, like many of the Galician towns on the Atlantic coast, is a quiet place of sober elegance. Its pink stone walls (typical of Galicia) were erected in the Middle Ages, though the salt fields on the coast were known already to the Phoenicians and the Vikings. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the noble families of the area erected country homes known as pazos. Today, many of these beautiful mansions with their walled gardens and peaceful patios have been tastefully turned into paradores – hotels under state supervision that preserve the ancient nobility of these monuments.

I look for a small café and spend the afternoon watching the ritual post-prandial strolls of the inhabitants along the shaded gardens and the seafront. Instead of lunch, I choose from a vast tapeo – a selection of small appetizers such as grilled octopus, potato omelette and roast peppers – and wash the meal down with a glass of splendid albariño (simply of one the best white wines in the world).

Valle-Inclán, the playwright who in the early 20th century changed the nature of European theatre with his violent, nightmarish, popular plays, was a frequent visitor to Cambados. He was born not far away in the small fishing village of Vilanova de Arousa at the home of his grandparents, a typical Galician house now turned into a museum. Carrying one of his books as a talisman, I enter the walled garden redolent of camellia and orange trees and roam through the intimate monastic bedrooms, the "respectable room" (so called because it was used to entertain visitors) and the medieval kitchen. During the long Galician winters, by the side of the kitchen’s stone fireplace, while the bacalhau simmered in the pot, the boy would study his Latin grammar under the supervision of the village priest. Under the smoky beams, I feel a sense of what life must have been like in this harsh region of Spain that Valle-Inclán once described as "poor grandmother land, beggarly and forgotten."

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