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IN COD'S COUNTRY

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Because these unassuming towns exude an intense feeling of peace, austerity and oblivion, it comes as a shock to see, rising high on the crest of a hill, massive fortifications like those of the castle of Soutomaior, further south, at the tip of God’s little finger. Built during the reign of King Alfonso VII, it acquired fame through one of its lords, Don Pedro Alfonso, who was known as Madrugada or Dawn because of his unpleasant habit of rising early to surprise his enemies. I spend the night in the Pousada Castillo de Soutomaior and, after a splendid meal of bacalhau a la herculina (cod with sherry, served in a clay pot), I take a stroll in the castle’s magnificent gardens. Huge century-old eucalyptus, oak and sweet chestnut trees rise like towers from the soft undergrowth, and jasmine and camellia blooms perfume the moist air. The locals like to say that some of these trees date back to prehistoric times. This scientific impossibility is, in their eyes, proven true by the existence of mazelike petroglyphs on the rocks overlooking the water, part of the vast prehistoric heritage of the region.

Since the area of the Rías Bajas is not extensive (barely 300 kilometres), it is easy to cross back and forth from the coast to the interior, and from the south to the north, along the excellent highways. I am not overly fond of beaches, but those in the Rías Bajas offer an embarrassment of riches. South, the islands of Cíes (reached by ferry from Vigo) have small, clean and secluded beaches, while the mainland boasts the Arenales de Barra, a fashionable nudist resort. More popular is the vast sandy strip of A Lanzada, on the O Grove peninsula, where, on the Feast of St. John (June 24), following an ancient fertility rite, women hoping to get pregnant enter the virile sea. North, the live dunes in Corrubedo national park have been celebrated as summer spots since the 19th century. The cleanup after the Prestige oil spill seems to have been successful. Only signs on balconies and shop windows reading "Nunca Máis" ("Never Again") remind the outsider of the tragedy.

Instead of sand and sea, I choose the mountains. It proves to be the right choice. With no particular goal in mind, I wind my way through dense green forests that allow, from time to time, endless views of both the River Miño and the inland valleys, a landscape bordering Portugal and peppered with mysterious dolmens, Romanesque chapels, picturesque water mills and a curious construction known as hórreo, which resembles a sarcophagus on stilts and is used to store and dry corn. On the way, small towns offer all manner of local specialties. In Tui, with its 13th-century fortified cathedral, I sit at a café and breakfast on espresso and crisp pastries known as rosquillas and melindres. In Arbo, I stop at the Pazo de A Moreira (a celebrated albariño winery) for a slice of empanada gallega, a large flat fish pasty, though the local delicacy is the prestigious lamprea, an eel-like big-mouthed fish of scented white flesh whose season is in April. In Buenos Aires, we too had empanadas and rosquillas under different names and shapes. I feel at home here.

In the local faces that watch the traffic go by, and in the signs painted on store fronts and street corners, I recognize the features and names of the parents and grandparents of my childhood friends and neighbours who, a century ago, crossed the ocean in search of their fortunes. Now their children and grandchildren are undertaking the return journey, escaping the economic crisis in Argentina in order to try their luck in the land of their ancestors. Here, among the soft Galician accents, a Buenos Aires drawl sometimes unsettles my sense of time and place.

And yet, Galicia still preserves a number of magnificent ancestral corners, undiscovered even by those returning to their family realms. Inland, on the road toward the cities of Ourense and Ribadavia, stands the San Clodio monastery, a quiet corner of the world in which I can feel, physically, the formidable weight and vastness of time. San Clodio appears to be older that its own Roman foundations, older than the prehistoric petroglyphs in the adjacent fields, older than the millennial sea itself.

Curiously, for a region outside the beaten track, outside even the commonplace imagination of Spain, Galicia strikes me as mysteriously familiar. The simple dishes, the golden wine, the constant presence of water, the overwhelming vegetation, the stones of manors and huts, the towering castles and churches appear as part of a place that has always been there, from the dawn of Creation, as if indeed modelled by the hand of a primeval god. On Cape Ortegal stands the chapel of San Andrés de Teixido. For centuries, the devout have dropped crumbs of bread in the fount to find out if their prayers will be answered: If the crumbs float, the saint has acquiesced. Votive offerings in the shape of ships and anchors decorate the walls of the tiny chapel. Pilgrims on their way to Santiago stop here, as well as more secular visitors, but the locals believe that there is not a soul on earth who has not, or will not eventually, visit San Andrés. "A San Andrés de Teixido vai de morto quen non foi de vivo," says a Galician proverb. ("Who has not gone to San Andrés when alive will do so when dead.") This conviction that the entire human race will one day or another crowd into this minuscule space overlooking the ancient sea is an instance of Galicia’s belief in its own graceful eternity. [ ]

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