Where from atavistic times the pilgrims went, following the Celtic cult at sunset
Once upon a time there was a town born at the end of all roads... Talking about A Coruña invites you to do it from the fable, because its pristine nature belongs where matter begins to dilute, to fade like watercolor strokes, to the realm of the intangible.
There are places of saturated and highly contrasted tones, with a frenetic and devastating rhythm, and at the opposite extreme, there is this one that has more than seventy terms to denominate the rain.
Here are more than 70 terms to master the rain
Delicate, with a special ear for the faint, for background noise or that which, being invisible, permeates everything. As you enter Galicia and, especially, the lands of the karn (etymological origin of A Coruña, which means sepulchral monument made with stones in the shape of a cone or horn), you will be closer than ever to being a fish, because the water not only embraces its geographical contour, but also also governs life where the sea does not reach, either in the form of mist, clouds, or rain.
THE LAND OF METAPHORS
Surely that aqueous sieve that impregnates the reality of A Coruña is the culprit that its natives like perceive reality always with a certain distance, sieved by a subtle veil that urges us to imagine, to deduce by indirect and sinuous paths, to arrive little by little but insistently as the orballo does.
They never answer without leaving another question in the air and they make you dizzy, like the turns of the muñeiras and the sweet alcohol of their queimadas. They make you dizzy because the language of feeling collides with the order of the verb and, sometimes, with that overwhelming union the miracle of metaphor arises, that could well have been born here, as some say, because it is “like seeing reality through the fog”, without contours, like music or poetry.
Not surprisingly, the language used in troubadour poetry throughout the Middle Ages in the Iberian Peninsula was Galician-Portuguese and on the other hand, the first time that Galician became literature was done through poetry, with the Rexurdimento and Rosalía de Castro, the most universal Coruña.
Rosalia de Castro
THE ROAD TO SUNSET
The difficulty in defining the boundaries between land and water, between the concrete and the fictitious, not only affects the language of this place. If you spend enough time on it, the spirit that imbues it takes over you and you acquire the perception of life as a continuum, without separations or ends, like a Moebius strip whose front and back end up being the same thing: that spiritual understanding of things that is only acquired in the vicinity of death.
From Malpica to Cape Finisterre it extends along the coast of A Coruña A costa da Morte (The coast of death), the true culmination of the pagan origin of the Camino de Santiago, where from atavistic times the pilgrims went, following the Celtic cult at sunset.
Around this adoration, in fact, Celtic (or Gaelic) culture it spread always looking for the westernmost territories of Europe (Britain, Wales, Ireland...) and, although Galicia lost these roots before, according to historians, it would be the center from which everything started. Not in vain, that is why he has inherited the tradition of the most important mystical pilgrimage in the West.
At Cape Finisterre, at sunset, it is possible to recover your soul if you have lost it
there in the cape of the end of the earth, the westernmost tip of Europe, our ancestors revered the end of life. They literally jumped into Charon's boat or symbolically they got rid of the ego, that often plays such tricks on us, to be reborn in a more humble and liberated way.
In the place where the sun disappears for the last time, where the immensity of the Atlantic Ocean reveals the smallness of the human being and the existence of something greater, it is possible to recover the soul if you have lost it, strip yourself of everything accessory, sacrifice it and complete the last of the initiatory journeys. Slowly dissolving into the sea, turning to foam like Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid as the sun melts over the horizon. In that same sea that Lluís Llach alludes to in his song A White Cloud; in that same wave that serenely ends and "Perhaps in letting you beat you, it begins."
There is a door in this enclave that is much deeper and more purifying than the one in the Cathedral of Santiago. It opens just with the last light of sunset and does so again in the first moments of the morning, reminding us that there is no life without death: the moment of luscofusco, an exceptional word of Galician origin capable of uniting both the meaning of 'twilight' and 'dawn'. The transition between day and night, the daily killing me softly, when the meager orange or rosy rays are responsible for blurring and undoing the separation between life and death in the last place on earth where the sun hides. The intense symbolic power of this experience is the mother not only of various cultures but also of all existing mystical creeds, and that is well worth a trip.
Other words for the most unmentionable also belong to Galician-Portuguese: homesickness, saudade and that beautiful one used to name someone who stares blankly, in a state of absence or enrapture: bolboreta (literally, butterfly); “you have stayed bolboreta” or “you have gone (even though you are here)”.
'Con-tem-plar' as the tempered look that confers an overall vision of existence
All these meanings that have transcended from the Galician language to Spanish are related (and not by chance) to the contemplative life of which the enlightened philosopher Byung Chul Han speaks as a grail of our modern societies, because he frees us from the slavery of performance and productivity.
'Contemplate' like the tempered gaze that confers a joint vision of existence and verifies that we have really understood and are ready to say goodbye or turn the page.
THOSE WHO LEFT
All this Coruña personality so appreciated by foreigners has not always been funny to the people here. This people does not need to do any goodbye ritual because it has historically been exposed to goodbyes, to parting with what they love most, to sacrifice: the goodbyes of their emigrants, massive from the 18th century to the 70s and the reason why the Spanish are known as 'Galician' throughout Latin America; the goodbyes of its fishermen who spend months at sea; those of their families who are waiting for them because for a long time there was no other way of survival.
The farewells of its fishermen who spend months at sea
The land of the twilight has been abundant in all kinds of escapism and not always beneficial. His story of abandonment and old losses (such as the Irmandiña defeat in the fifteenth century) has always been linked to some low self-esteem. “Soul that you are fleeing from yourself, what are you looking for, foolish, in the others?”, wrote that of Castro, knowing that the greatest wealth lies in the acceptance of one's own uniqueness.
Because of the spirituality that we have been talking about here, Galicia became the first segregated kingdom of the Roman Empire. Priscillianism spread like water in these parts, opposing for two centuries the edict of Thessalonica, urging to abandon the opulence of the Roman church and join the poor; abolished slavery and granted women a freedom and power unprecedented in the fourth and fifth centuries. The result of this is the first known manuscript in Vulgar Latin, written by a woman, Egeria, a pilgrim Priscilian nun from Gallaecia in the 4th century.
MEIGAS AND NUBEIROS: THE MYTHOLOGY
In the realm of the nebulous, where the boundaries between illusion and reality blur, the myth reverberates and nothing is what it seems. Beyond the Roman heritage, Galicia has an ancestral symbolic and mythological richness which the Spain normalized by the Church lacks.
The meigas, who speak them, there are them, although hidden
If you suddenly find yourself caught in a fog bank or an unforeseen storm, don't blame the weather. The person in charge will certainly be a cloud or thunder, a huge being dressed in black skins who disposes of the clouds and the lightning of the sky at his whim. On full moon nights, near the rivers, they will be able to come out to meet you the washerwomen, spirits of women who will wash bloodstained sheets and implore your help. Don't give it to them. You could get caught up in compassion and be swept away by the current. If in the middle of a forest, you perceive in the air a smell of melted wax, perhaps you are without knowing it before the entourage of souls in pain of the Santa Compaña who warn of a loss.
But don't worry, to dissipate the clouds you can always resort to the favors of the meigas, that speak them, there are them, although hidden. One of the most protective the Lady of Castro. She dwells in the deposits of this undulating culture, the hill forts, fortified villages with a circular floor plan dating back to the Bronze Age erected on a knoll or mount. If you talk to him properly, she will grant you the good fortune and protection that these archaic villages of peaceful and horizontal organization enjoyed.
Do it low and empty of pride because this land of historically underrated power has unfurled its dreams beneath your feet. Always more of God than of Caesar, more divine than worldly.