Just home from the fifth or sixth trip into Spain and this smokey, misty province of Galicia continues to grow on me. Galicia, the province of Spain abutting Northwestern Portugal, has mystery about it and is geographically well suited for its history of smuggling and intrigue. There are extensive estuarine inlets that stack northward from the Minho River all the way to the shoulder of Spain where the Bay of Biscay commences; they are perfect for puttering about in a small boat and if one wants to glam-cruise it would be easy to sail from good hotel to good hotel. These estuaries are ideal for aquaculture too and in every inlet huge rafts of mussel frames lie in rows that recede into the distance like a flotilla.
Galacia is a world-hub of pelagic fishing also and the fishing fleets serve as ready-made cover for the fish boats that go out with the fleet, but come back laden with untaxed cigarettes, as well as cocaine and hashish and other dire party favors. Smuggling seems to have been encouraged by difficult economic conditions over various decades and the fact that it was not just the domain of the under-fringes of society kept it alive. There were surely the brutish in this endeavor, but the local mayors, civic and business leaders were also “working in the night.” Galacia, cut off from the rest of Spain by a rugged mountain range, seems to have been self-ruling most of its history. Further, in support of various kinds of adventuring, up until 1987 Galacia’s smuggling culture was just barely criminalized, the smuggling of anything being a misdemeanor punishable only by a fine. So getting busted with a couple of tons of cocaine was viewed much like double parking or littering. In the last half of the twentieth century though they’ve ‘grown up’ as criminal gangs and established ties with the South American cartels, which inevitably turned an almost quaint social custom into one of fear and darkness. There are at least 10 identifiable thriving clans and enterprises, most of which have gone beyond political guidance, illegal cigarettes, local squabbling and feuding to a spot of murder here and there.
The buccaneering communities reach back much further and to darker places than mere drug and tobacco smuggling, however. From the fifteenth century through the end of the nineteenth century wreckers plagued this coast. Wreckers are land-pirates who put up false lights to lure ships ashore and when they came ashore, murder the crews and make off with the ship’s cargo. There are nearly one thousand known shipwrecks on this coast…so many under suspicious circumstances that the Galician coast came to be known as Costa de la Muerte. In Galacia as well as in many other coasts of the world, including America, wrecking was once a way of life and many seacoast villages counted on wrecking as part of their economies. Harsh stuff if you ask me and harsh for the Galatians as well who seemed to have turned away from their dimmer history toward tourism for instance, although if you’ve ever watched a thousand Nebraskans dumped off a cruise ship into a little fishing village, tourism seems to dim as well.
In bright contrast to the Coast of Death is the astonishingly good seafood, seemingly of endless variety. Thinking I already had found the best of the best…grilled limpet scallops…on the last trip to O Grove I discovered Galacian Mariscos Sopa.
Mussels on their way to market
It seems to vary from restaurant to restaurant, with one place offering more mussels and the next, more crab or monk fish, but the seasonings orbiting around garlic, parsley, basil, peppers and smoked paprika are a constant in this soup. It is heavenly; rich, savory, complex, all the descriptors you can imagine for the best seafood stew on the planet. But then there are the Scissor-hand Cigali Lobsters…smallish for lobsters, they seem to be wearing pruning shears and they are huge in taste and texture. The trick is to settle on an immense platter of many different kinds of delights and I will long remember sitting with Linda in a waterfront restaurant in O Grove with our dog sleeping at our feet, the fishing fleet bobbing in the inner harbor and this platter of pure goodness in front of us, a little wood burning stove in the corner, the rain pounding down in the courtyard and the wonderful scene of neighbors and friends drifting in to sit around one big table to while away the afternoon, to be Galician. Everyone spoke to us as they arrived and the whole effect was cinematic, as if it might be part of an adventure and a bigger story, part of living in Iberia for instance.
As always, I am intrigued by work boat design, particularly fish boats as they tend to be small and therefore must have excellent sea-keeping characteristics. And a good sea boat is almost always a handsome boat. The fishing fleets in the Galacan ports still show their saling heritage and in fact many of them still have steadying sails. The larger vessels tend to be double ended and burdensome with full bilges and great carrying capacity. There are also pure sailing craft with markedly raked spars and long bow sprits.
Former fish boat
Handsome local type
The most delightful to me, though, are the small day boats which are transom sterned and gracefully plumb bowed with long straight keels. Most have now had little outboard motors hung off the transom, but all seem to have retained their sailing rigs and their odd, massive two-piece oars.
They are fitted with crutches on each beam that allow them to sit upright in the sand when the tide recedes and they are little poems to see sitting upright and perky on the hard. The best among them no longer fish and are now obviously toys, and toys to make a boy yearn for one. But I hardly ever have any fun.
