Thursday, May 31, 2012
The Heights of Santiago

I do make it to the Cathederal in time to hear lauds, and participate in the Mass that follows. It is in honor of the feast of the Visitation, when Mary, newly pregnant, went to see her cousin Elizabeth who, despite being childless and past child-bearing age, had conceived a child who would be John the Baptist.

Eight priests sing lauds and another four men --the sacristan, the homilist, the celebrant and a man in white robes assist at Mass. it is my last opportunity to give Santiago a hug, so I queue on the line. In front of me are a group of French tourists, taking photos and filming with a videocamera despite the sign stating that to do so is not permitted.

I have come to think that the compulsive taking of photographs is a sign of the anxiety of modern man. We want something we want something to hold onto to preserve whatever specialness we thought an event held, but by the time we get home and print the photos around they are insufficient to the purpose, and we are let down. I see in my own journey, coming to a close, a similar dilemma. Have I been transformed by the trip or have I merely been in motion?

At the end of the Mass I walk over to Archbishop Gelmirez' palace for my last contact with the Cathedral, the tour of its banquet hall, interior walkways and rooftops. The rooftops are called cubiertas, and they are stepped, because the Cathedral was a defensive redoubt against invasion by the Moors, the Visigoths and the Vikings, all of whom waged campaigns in Gaicia. The purpose of building a stepped roof was to permit the Cathederal to be defended more effecively than if soldiers could only defend from the ramparts. From the cubiertas all the rest of the Cathederal can be seen, including the two towers shaped like ziggurats. All of Santiago, too can be seen, as well as the countryside beyond.

The tour guide is extremely knowledgeable and adds a few facts to my knowledge about the Cathederal. The very large fob attached to the rope at the end of the reel from which the botafumeiro swings is called an alcachofa, the Spanish word for artichoke; the swinging of the botafumeiro on days other than the most holy days, is arranged by the making of a donation to the Cathedral of three hundred Euros. Also, with regard to the Cathedral bells, on Good Friday, the bells did not ring. Instead, the Cathedral decided to install a large carraca in one of the towers --a wooden rattle, whose grinding sound was deemed more appropriate to the solemnity of the Crucifixion than bells.

The tour over, I have a quick lunch and start to walk to the hotel with forty minutes before a taxi arrives to take me to the airport. However, two middle-aged women, pilgrims from Brazil doing the Camino Portugues starting from Oporto, ask me for directions to the Seminario Menor next to the Dominican convent of the sisters of Belvis, from whom I bought the cookies. They are a very long way from thre, and I have time and know how to get there directly, so I guide them there. The younger one of the two is sick with a bad sore throat and is having difficulty moving. The older one follow me, but at one point, just two streets before they would have arrived at the point where they could descend rua da Trompa and reach their destination, they fall back, and I lose them.

It is a moment worthy of the magical realism of South America: one minute I am taking two women pilgrims to a Dominican convent in an old part of Santiago, the next they have vanished. --Of I have gone too fast for them, which turns out to be the case. They have lost me, and I them: I find them getting directions from a woman who is passing by on her way to do an errand. I take the sick woman by the hand and gently walk her the two blocks left. I point out the convent and the Seminario Menor in the distance and tell them to follow the slope of the road: at its end is their destination. They give me weak smiles and go on. Soon they will be relieved of their distress.

I go to the hotel, take the taxi and get to the airport twenty-five minutes before check-in is to start. However, most of the passengers for the four-twenty-five flight are already on line. They have been waiting for the Spanish Aer Lingus personnel, who only start working at 2:30 p.m. When they come to me, they take my suitcase, but tell me my knapsack is too bulky, and I am obliged to discard clothes I wore on the Camino. Ultimately, though I get on the plane with my knapsack and my bag of books, no worse the triage.

The flight to Dublin is smooth, and I have a lively conversation with Sinead, a teacher of anatomy at the Medical School. Arriving in Dublin, I have the sense that I have already started my re-entry to the world I left behind, with its fast pace and attendant tensions. I go to the bus stop for the Air Coach, which I have been told to take, and there I see the airport chapel where I attended Mass the Sunday I flew in from New York and waited to change planes for Rome when I began my journey three months ago in March; where I asked to use the lavatory so I could freshen up a bit before the last leg of my journey to Rome, where Manuel Otero Mari picked me up, and I started my trek.

But I must move on to Dublin. There is a bus to take me to Ballsbridge, and I check into my hotel quickly. My room features a built in sauna for one person and a whirlpool bath. The American Embassy is a few blocks down from my hotel on Northumberland Street, as are many professional offices. I might be in Washington, D.C. from the look of the park across the street and the low-height modern offices.

The hotel recommends a bistro called Roly's, across the street from the embassy for dinner. And again, I feel as though I have already started my re-entry: the restaurant has two cookbooks to its name, it is throbbing with customers and the food is much, much more complicated than anything I have eaten for a long time, at least since the lunch I ate at Bofinger my last day in Paris. I have a leek soup, a lamb pie and an apple strudel, all good, but all enriched by the addition of butter or cream. The apple tart I order comes with vanilla sauce and ice cream and is more pastry and sugar than apple. In Santiago I had green apples from the fruit bowl the Altair set aside for guests to snack on. I am wondering where the nearest grocery store in Dublin 4 is, a neighborhood where houses are listed at prices of well over a million dollars.

I know I want to see the Yeats exhibition at the National Library, and visit Saint Patrick's Cathedral, where Jonathan Swift was the Dean; and I want to see my friends Grainne and Patrick and Niamh and Paul, but I am already feeling as though I want to cut short my stay in Dublin. The dinner at Roly's whose cookbooks emphasize the reasonableness of their prices, has cost me sixty-five dollars. Twelve days of this and I will blow my trip budget.

May 30 2012
The Museum, the road rally and the sun

The sun breaks out in the afternoon, and with it come the tour groups: lots of pilgrims from Ireland, just in from Tipperary, groups accompanied by a priest or priests. At this time of the year Irish pilgrims come en masse, and flights back and forth fill up months in advance. I am certain to be flying to Dublin with a planeload of pilgrims, priests and nuns.

I pass the time in the room taking care of details of tomorrow's departure, then walk over to the Cathedral Museum at the side of the main facade. As I have been on a pilgrimage, I pay 3 Euros, instead of 5. The museum has been modernized since I was here last: it now features camera-driven glass doors that open automatically, leading to an area displaying archaeological finds, as well as damaged sections of the Romanesque parts of the Cathedral, preserved. The signal piece is the Choir of the Romanesque church, which has been painstakingly rebuilt using reconstituted pieces of the missing segments. This labor of the workshop of Maestro Mateo, who was charged with completing the works begun earlier and bringing the Cathedral to completion and dedication on April 21, 1211, includes heads of holy figures, each individualized, carved above the Choir seats. The Compostelan Romanesque is known for its playfulness: saints smile, animals have funny expressions. The woman who had to kiss her lover's head twice a day after his beheading, is part of the winding decoration of what was once one of the Cathederal's supporting columns.

The Museum is part of the Cathedral, so it is possible to visit the Cathedral cloister. Not home to any religious order, it is simply an interior courtyard to the side of which lie the changing rooms for the priests. The Treasury reveals the Cathedral's treasures: bejeweled monstrances, carvings in ivory, bas reliefs known as cornucopias:
religious scenes elaborately hammered in silver and adorned with silver flowers and leaves.

The library holds, along with its many rare books, the original of the botafumeiro. On the topmost floor there is an exterior gallery that looks out on the square and offers a wonderful view Santiago's roofs and the countryside beyond. Although, in another example of the challenge to the spiritual world posed by the material, half of the Praza del Obradoiro is full of classic cars --a Rolls Royce, a Stutz Bearcat, and others. A road rally from Gijon to Bayonne is taking place, and stopping in Santiago: the only square large enough to park all the participants' cars for the night is the Cathedral's.

The tapestry rooms are on the other side of the exterior gallery. The tapestries, Flemish and Spanish, were the 1811 gift of Don Pedro de Acuna (tilde) y Malvar, Canon of the Cathedral. The tapestries from Flanders feature mythological scenes of heroic proportions. but perhaps more significant artistically are a number of panels for which Goya drew the cartoons. These were woven at the Royal Workshop and the Workshop of Santa Barbara. Shown with Goya's written descriptions of the subject of his cartoons --which can be seen at the Prado in Madrid-- they remind us that Goya's eye rejected nothing, that it was catholic in its reach, capturing daily life around him unflinchingly. One panel depicts a gypsy woman walking with her inamorato, who takes umbrage at the proffer of a flower from a seated man. Another takes in guileless boys playing at soldier. Another depicts rough and ready men, armed with pistols, protecting a cache of tobacco from bandits. Goya looks life straight in the face and finds it beautiful in all its messy glory. That is why he is the most Spanish of all painters, the closest to the life of his times as it was lived at all levels of society.


My tour of the museum over, I ask the guard if there is not another section to see. If I make a reservation, I can use my museum ticket to obtain a discount to see Archbishop Gelmirez' palace attached to the Cathedral. To do so I have pass the central stairs of the Praza de Obradoiro next to it, mount the stairs to the Palace door. The young woman at the entrance tells me that I can come tomorrow at a few minutes of eleven a.m. and be admitted. The end of the visit includes a trip to the topmost parts of the towers of the Cathedral, which should be something to see.

If I can I will get to the Cathedral in time to hear lauds, the mid-morning chant, which is sung, and then go over to the Gelmirez palace. That should give me enough time to wrap up packing and leave for the airport by 2:00 p.m., in more than enough time to complete the check-in for the 4:20 p.m. flight to Dublin. The visit will be my farewell to Santiago.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Weighing the luggage

I take up the offer of the pharmacist from whom I bought a nail clipper yesterday and take my large backpack and my rolling suitcase there to be weighed.The pharmacist, a short-haired, clean-faced woman in her sixties is not at all put out. Indeed, she makes me get on the scale with the backpack to assure that the weight is as accurate as possible. The backpack is slightly under the limit, and the suitcase slightly over. If I get to the airport first thing, I can hopefully sort out any problem there: in my experience, arriving early for check in finds the personnel in a more forgiving frame of mind than later, when time pressure brings out the worst in everyone.

I return to the hotel with the bags and grab a coffee at Girasol down the street. While I wait for it to be prepared, I eye the back page of El Correo de Galicia. It seems that the adult son of Cayetana, Duchess of Alba, the most titled aristocrat in Europe, was visiting Santiago yesterday. He enjoyed tapas outdoors at a restaurant, Abastos 2.0, next to the Mercado de Abastos. Curious what sort of place a Duke might eat in, I head there.

Surprisingly, it is down another street from Praza de Certvantes, which I have crossed tens of times this trip. In Santiago, you are always going around in circles, but also always stumbling on sections of the city you never knew existed. I find the market, which is at its busiest now, in the late morning. Abastos 2.0 is an unpretentious spot, a glassed in rectangle of stone with a small, narrow kitchen on one side, and tables on the other, along with outdoor tables. Judging from the backpackers enjoying late-morning tapas and beer, its popularity is not limited to aristocrats.

I return to the hotel to write a note of appreciation to Alberto Conde, whose columns in La Voz de Galicia I enjoyed so while here. I found the offices of the newspaper, but the receptionist had no idea who he was. It is said that Spaniards are reluctant to acknowledge the gifts of those among them, preferring to find fault than to celebrate, so I hope to offer a countervailing gesture. Fortunately, the clipping has the newspaper's e-mail, so I am able to compose my homage and forward it in care of the editorial offices.

As to the point about the mindset of Spaniards, I would add my perception that self-importance is the national vice. At numerous points, I have found myself in conversation in Spanish with one or another person who took it upon themselves to declare a thing this way or that. At the police station I had to obtain a ticket for the queue from a woman sitting next to the machine. When I told her what I needed, she told me that unless I had a death certificate no one would give me anything, and that she wanted to make sure that I understood that before I sat down and waited. In fact, when I spoke with Jose Manuel de la Casa Vadillo, the supervisor of the D.N.I. section, I got all that I needed in the way of information to solve my problem.

This morning, when I was at the pharmacist's, a woman was waiting for a prescription to be filled. She overheard the pharmacist and I talking after the luggage was weighed, making the conversion from kilos into pounds. She threw herself in to the discussion.

"But you are fine --you only have 22 kilos, and you say the limit is 44--"

She had not recognized that a kilo is 2.3. pounds, and that I was slightly over the limit. The pharmacist explained her error to her, at which point the woman retracted her opinion and took the opposite point of view.

Another example: The priest who celebrated Mass in the Capilla de la Communion of the Cathedral yesterday morning came in a few minutes before the hour. He began preparing the altar table for the celebration. Seeing me sitting in the empty chapel, he asked me why I was not standing. I could not entirely hear what he was saying, so I stood up to hear him better and said "What? What?" --at which point he recognized that I was not from Santiago, smiled and said nothing more --although by then I was standing. The priest is apparently used to having Mass goers get to their feet when he enters a chapel, and took my recumbent posture for disrespect.

After Mass, in another part of the Cathedral, a homeless man was sitting against one of the pillars. The security guard came over, said a few words, and returned to where the man was sitting. Bellowing, the guard said,

"The doctor says 'Do you need medical assistance?'" --I walked away so as not to be in the way. Leaving the Cathedral a few minutes later, I saw emergency personnel impatiently ordering the man --by now on a stretcher-- to blow air into a plastic bag. "Blow! You have to blow!"

And a final example: I entered the crypt of Saint James the Apostle to pay my respects earlier in the week during a point when there were few people in the area. I came to say a prayer and knelt before the grill, but not before spying a middle aged man in casual dress standing behind me. He was about to take a picture in contravention of the request that the area --like that behind the altar where the Saint's bust lies-- lie beyond the reach of cellphones, videocameras and other photographic devices.

Feeling self-important myself perhaps, I told the man photographs of the crypt were not allowed. Whereupon, he let loose with a torrent of argument:

"Where does it say that? What do you know? Who are you to tell me I cannot photograph here-- Stick to your prayer and leave me alone." I said my prayer and left the crypt, leaving the man, posing his photograph.

If, as I thought after a month there, every man is a king in France, in Spain, he is an emperor.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Evening in Santiago

I have never known Santiago de Compostela, the town: I have been here at least five times, not counting these last three visits in two weeks: 1957, 1965, 1969, 1985 and 1996. Yet all I remember of the visits is the area around the Cathedral. Yet Santiago, being the seat of a medieval Cathedral, and a place of pilgrimage, had many religious orders associated with it, each with their own building and community, some of which are still active. Among these are the cloistered Dominican sisters of Belvis, the Convent of las Mercedarias the Convento La Salle, and the Order of Saint Clare. As to orders for men, the Jesuits still teach at the Colexio San Francisco Javier, diocesan priests at the Seminario Menor, a school for boys, and distinct from El Seminario Mayor, which trains priests. All these institutions have their own buildings, most of them built in Baroque style in the 17th and 18th centuries, like much of Santiago, including the Cathedral.

Santiago also has many chapels, each with its own personality. The Capilla de las Animas, next to the Arquivo Universitario Historico, the university archives, is particularly striking: it features a polychrome plaque in the architrave of the exterior: nine long-haired men --they resemble the Apostles at the Last Supper, with the fifth being the tallest, the others in descending height making up four on each side of him. Their throats and shoulders and the top of their chests are exposed, and their hands are clasped together in a prayerful gesture. Yet their bodies are being consumed by flames as tall as wheat sheaves, a field of fire.

These are not apostles filled with the Holy Ghost, nor are they souls in Hell. They are souls in Purgatory, and, like Hell, it is hot there. The modern mind no longer contemplates Purgatory in the sense the builders of the chapel did, if we believe at all, we live with the dichotomy of Heaven and Hell, and nothing in between. The medieval mind, however, recognized gradations between the seventh circle of Hell, and the "seventh heaven" as we speak of it today. Santiago is full of reminders of this kind, that indicate that human beings looked at existence on earth very differently from the way we do. On the Cathedral facade on Praza das Praterias, for another instance, is a sculpted scene in relief of a woman kissing the lips of a head severed from its body. Legend has that it was the head of her lover, whom her husband --who killed him-- obliged her to kiss twice a day. Not a mere folk tale, the founders of the Cathedral --for the Praterias facade is one of only two that retain their original Romanesque form intact-- saw some edifying value in illustrating this grisly story, raising it to parable status by commissioning the sculptures.


There are lighter sides to Santiago as well: it is a University town, of one of the oldest universities in the world, founded in 1495, around the time Ferdinand and Isabella sent Columbus to discover a new route to the Indies, and built the Hostal. It is also a center of Galician folk culture, featuring Galician musicians playing hammered dulcimers and especially bagpipes in the high-ceilinged passageway that leads to the Plaza del Obradoiro. The sound of a piper playing a cheerful jig (and there is a different one every hour of the day), can be heard from a distance, the music floating through the air and adding a light note to the natural solemnity of the Cathedral. When I hear the piper's strains, I want to dance --and have.

A classical guitarist playing in another corner, offers an alternative musical form. And the mimes dressed like Santiago as a pilgrim, with varying degrees of success --one actually has the soulful eyes and rustic manner associated with the Apostle in his pilgrim garb, and attracts many who want their picture taken with him-- all make for a peaceful experience in the vicinity of the Cathedral. Not that this is always the case, as my entry into Santiago the day of the bicycle race demonstrated, but generally, the Plaza is a place of peace and celebration for those who made the trip to this remote place in Europe.

I go there this evening, after having gone so far as to tour Santiago's modern shopping district --not too much different from those anywhere else, and therefore, just as well avoided. There will not be too many more opportunities to visit the Saint, and I want to know more about the chapel behind the altar, la Capilla de la Confession, where the German pilgrims heard Mass this morning. There is a seven-thirty Mass, the last of the day, so I head over to the Cathedral.


There is a large group of Italian pilgrims visiting with their priest. The church is full, but I squeeze into the one remaining seat in the front pew, next to a couple who will take the collection, on one side, and two Brazilian visitors on the other. The highlight of the Mass (apart from the sacrament, of course), is the swinging of the censer, the botafumeiro.

The botafumeiro, about fifty inches tall, and made of silver, takes eight men to raise. The sacristan places the incense on the already hot coals, which catch and start to smoke as the men, pulling together, start raising the censer with one abrupt pull, followed by a pause, and another, each pull widening the ambit and height of the censer's swing. Starting out small, the eight men widen the censer's arc until it swings out almost the full length of the transept, over the heads of the faithful seated in the transept pews, until, at the climax of the spectacle, it just misses the ceiling, before the decline in centrifugal force brings it slowly down to earth in a few more swings. One of the eight grabs the censer by one of the chains attached to its parts, the remaining force swinging him around once, at which point the censer is once more at rest. Another man removes the ashes of the incense, and another pulls on the rope to lift the botafumeiro back to its stationery position above the altar table.

The botafumeiro is not raised predictably: some holy days it is, others not. The censer was raised this evening as a courtesy to the pilgrims who came from Italy with their pastor. Its raising is a bit of a circus act --and the presiding priest noted that whenever it occurs, word gets around in advance, and the Cathedral fills up, particularly during the last half of the Mass. Think of the perfume rising as a sign of the Holy Spirit he said, and I am reminded of Indian temples and similar references to incense as the material manifestation of the spirit. In fact, when I look at the altar piece of the Cathedral of Santiago, I see an elaborateness of gold decoration comparable only to the many-layered elaborations of Hindu temples and the churrigueresque, the Mexican Baroque (which reaches its apogee in the Viceregal Chapel in the Monastery of Tepozotlan). The multiple layers of gold decoration on all of these are like encrustations --it is almost impossible to tell where one motif ends and another begins, they are so piled on top of one another. Of the three gilded elaborations, Santiago has the largest and most fully realized angels, though.


And, although Saint Peter's in Rome may be more architecturally significant, and more externally representative of Roman Catholicism, Santiago represents something else, something perhaps more compelling. Santiago represents the life of the spirit, and its promise. Because everyone who goes on a pilgrimage to Santiago hopes that, at the end, whatever the rigors of the journey, at its end, our inner restlessness will be becalmed, if only temporarily. This is not the same thing as a vacation from the workaday, it is the hope that our souls will find peace and our incompleteness completion.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012
The Police Station

I awake thinking that I must take advantage of being in Santiago again to really take in the historic buildings in addition to the Cathedral, and that it wouldn't hurt to go to Mass there again, after the pro forma celebration in Esteiro Sunday. Then I remember that I am supposed to go to the police station as early as possible to see about obtaining some substitute for my father's Carnet.

Remembering what the priest said the day before about the active life and the contemplative life, I decide to go to the Cathedral first. It is 8:30 a.m. and there is a Mass for German pilgrims going on in a chapel inside and behind the main altar. It is inaccessible except by previous arrangement with the diocese. The door is gilded bronze with panels in bas relief depicting events in the life of Christ. I would love to be able to go inside and get a closer look, as the Mass has ended, but the chapel is closed. I catch the eye of a woman, a German pilgrim collecting liturgy books and indicate that I would like to go inside, but she waves her finger at me in the negative. Ah, well

I walk towards the main altar's pews and sit in the forwardmost pew to study the altar: Santiago the Moorslayer emerges on horseback from the top of the altarpiece, below he appears again in his guise as pilgrim. At the front of the church he is seen in glory, and his figure appears again on the Cathedral facades. I attend Mass --which is said by another old school priest --bald and formal-- in the Communion Chapel to the side of the main altar. The chapel altarpiece is relatively plain, bathed in gold. When communion is given, it is at the altar rail, although the priest only administers it two by two. Once done, I leave the Cathedral and walk over to the police station.

Here, all my conceit and my impatience are revealed in their fullness. I take a number and set about to wait. My number is A312. The "A" distinguishes me from those with a "G" next to the number, which indicates that they have made an appointment on line or by telephone before coming by. After 30 minutes I am called to the desk of a tall young man with an angular face and glasses.

I explain that my father left Spain in 1945 and that he has no Carnet, that he never returned to Spain. Then he would not have one, because the Carnet only came into existence in 1951, says the young man. Perhaps there was another document that was used instead, a different form --but you have to order that from the Registro Civil in Madrid. To do that you have to speak to our supervisor --and he points to an empty office to the side of the open plan desks where he and his colleagues are working.

"He will be here in a momentino", he says, using the Galician diminutive for a little while.


That little while is more like an hour, during which I roil with agitation. I think that the man --Jose Manuel, they tell me his name is-- has returned several times: first come two men --one of whom looks more Irish than Spanish-- who look more like detectives than bureaucrats, but enter his office and start touching everything. Then in comes a serious-looking man carrying a computer keyboard. I start talking to him about my problem, but he tells me that I am not who he is looking for, and he goes behind the office with the other men. After another ten minutes Jose Antonio-- for that is actually his name, comes into his office, a fair-skinned, light-haired, blue-eyed, well-dressed, poised, intelligent servant of the Spanish state. He immediately puts me at ease, asking me to sit down to explain my situation.

The problem is that there is no Carnet, although he can request one, which will result in a declaration from Madrid that it does not exist. However, that will not prove that the Antonio Bouzas Bouzas in whose name the Muros and Esteiro parcels appear, is my father. In any event, to make that request, Jose Antonio will need:

My father's death certificate;
My father's birth certificate;
My birth certificate;
My marriage certificate--

All so that I can establish my right to ask that the public record in Madrid be checked. If I do that, Jose Antonio will mail me what he receives in response to his request, the declaration of nullity of the existence of the Carnet.

That, however, will not prove the ownership of the parcels by Antonio Bouzas Bouzas, my father.

Well, Jose Antonio says, once we have the document from Madrid, I can speak with the Catastro, and verify for them that there is no other Antonio Bouzas Bouzas listed in the records who came from the Muros and Outes townships, which should satisfy the Catastro.

He gives me his e-mail address, phone number and full name: Jose Antonio de la Casa Vadilla, a name to conjure with. I tell him I will send him an e-mail from my hotel this afternoon, and that I look forward to working with him.

--I just hope that there is no Antonio Bouzas Bouzas other than my father between Muros and Outes.

Monday, May 28, 2012
Leaving Esteiro


I hear the alarm at 7:30 a.m. Francisco is picking me up at 8:30 a,m., so we can return the bicycle, see Lolis, and visit the Land Registry Office in time for me to make a bus to Santiago sometime today. Although it was Sunday night, and Monday is a work day, last night the carousing went on until late. Through the apartment's thin walls I could hear an older man with a voice that sounded roughened with alcohol and cigarettes upbraiding a young boy. I did not want to know why.

I took one last look at the apartment and brought all my bags downstairs. I had a bag full of foodstuffs for Francisco, from leftover leg of lamb and ensalada rusa Sarita pushed on me, to half an empanada gallega. I had the bicycle and my large knapsack and a bag with reading matter and the small knapsack with passport, cash, credit cards and property documents. Plus trash to put into the recyling bin down the street.

Leaving the rest behind, I walked out the door with the newspapers and some banana peels and turned onto the street. There, in front of the beauty salon, was Francisco, ten minutes early. We were ready in minutes, the bicycle fitting easily into the hatchback of the car, along with my large knapsack. The plan was to leave the bicycle and helmet tied up against the railing in front of Triki Bicycles in Serres, a neighborhood at the outskirts of Muros: Vicente, who rented it to me, would recognize his bicycle and the combination. We were in Serres in a few minutes, the bicycle locked up and on our way to Muros in time to see Lolis first thing at 9:00 a.m..

After barging in on Lolis early (she would normally see no one until 10:00 a.m.), and asking more questions about where to find out about a carnet de identidad, she sent us back to the City Hall. Someone in the administration told us that the carnet de identidad existed when my father left in 1945; and, that to find it, I would have to ask in the offices of the National Police, who would have access to the data base. The offices are in Santiago: fortunately, I was going there. Sometime before I left Santiago for Dublin I could stop by the National Police offices and request a copy of the documentation on file next to my father's name.


We followed through on Francisco's last idea, that we check the private land registry. An office on the outskirts of town, we found it by asking a passersby, who directed us to an unobtrusive building. We walked up the stairs into a plain white office with two desks. A young man, very tall, very thin, with longish hair --he looked more like he ought to be in a rock band than behind a desk-- took down all the information and started looking. He found nothing.

"There is no obligation to register here. It is a private service, so not everyone wants to pay the fee." The fee is between 65 Euros to 100 Euros a parcel, which would explain why.

Our last straw having been exhausted, Fernando and I started to make our way towards the Castro Mil stop --it was about quarter of eleven, and there was a bus to Santiago at eleven. I told him it was my sister's and my intention to make the parcels over to him, and that she and I would never build a house there or buy an apartment there, and who knows when we would be there again. It was our wish that he have the property --although he should tell no one of our intention, to avoid controversy. In our view, this was a result that would have pleased our father, that the land stay with someone who would appreciate it.

"Well, that's a lot --your sister might want to give it to her children--"

"They are not going to come here to build, Francisco,"

"Well, this property that belongs to you and your sister --having it is not on my mind. I just want to see that you take care of what your father left you and your sister. I will do my best to find whatever your father and Carabinas wrote about the properties they exchanged. If I find something, I will take it to Sarita and she can e-mail you."

The Castro Mil drew up and started accepting passengers. I gave Francisco a big hug and that is how I left Esteiro. Francisco smiled broadly, and I got the feeling that he enjoyed tracking down the parcels and following leads to establish my father's ownership to the Savilas parcel. I am struck by how keen Francisco's brain is: he did not know anything about the Savilas parcel --it was Sarita who brought it up-- but he came up with the idea of visiting Jose de Pachon, with the idea of contacting Monica, the daughter of the man with whom my father exchanged parcels; and with the idea of visiting the land registry office today.

Yet Francisco never held a job for very long: he worked on ships, the natural route for someone from a small village on the Costa da Morte; he came to the United States and worked as a painter. None of the jobs panned out. So that now, in his fifties, he has not contributed in any significant degree, to his retirement. On account of his partial deafness and his vision, he collects a modest disability pension.

As a young boy, his mother found him the most difficult of her children to cope with. Not being a particularly sensitive woman to begin with, inured by hardship to all but the most drastic of signs of distress in her children, Francisco was rebuked often. When she became too infirm to care for herself, her arms and legs swelling, making walking difficult, she became more dependent on Francisco to drive her where she needed to go. Francisco's job became taking his mother where she needed, and responding to her demands. In thanks, she left him half her house, and the majority of the land parcels, thereby earning Francisco the enmity of his two sisters. His twin brother, back in New York, contacts him weekly to see how he is making out.

He is a peaceful man, whose natural thoughtfulness was never nurtured. In childhood, he said, after his father died, they had just enough to eat, but no money. Existence was bleak. His mother must have been a tyrant --Rosa did not remind me of Katrina Paxinou playing Maria in Whom The Bell Tolls for nothing-- and now, he has a measure of his own life. It may not be large enough for most of us, but is suits Francisco. I was lucky to have him play Virgil to my Dante during my week in Esteiro.

***

I knew I would be sick on the Castro Mil. Once again, the winding roads, one after the other, negotiated easily by the driver and the other passengers, made me green. Seventy six kilometers over two hours might have been seventy six hours. Fortunately, I did not have much in my stomach, so I made it to Santiago without incident. I hoisted my large knapsack on again and walked into Santiago just as I had when I arrived from Irun and when I arrived from the Camino. I was a pilgrim again.

I arrived at the Hotel Altair and was rapturous to be shown to a well-furnished hotel room with a modern bath with lots of hot water. I put my things down and went first to the post office, to mail my French books home. From there, I went around the corner to the National Police station. In civil law countries, every citizen and legal resident has an identity card, and it is associated with a fixed address. If the cardholder moves, it is incumbent upon him to register his new address with the police station in the precinct of residence, so that it can be part of the national data base.

The station is a very large modern square of the same ivory color that I admired so in the rustic buildings in Muros. There were three policemen there to ask me what I wanted, and explaining, told me I had to come back between 9:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. to ask about the carnet de identidad. Francisco had explained that having to go to Santiago from a rural village in relation to some change in the "carnet" is normal --and inconvenient. Perhaps the coincidence that I am again in Santiago will augur well for production of my father's "carnet" data tomorrow.

After this I went to see Amparo Rodriguez Meyer, from whom I had bought jet the week before: I wanted to see whether her employee had returned, so that I would see the little museum of jet she had told me about. The employee had quit, but Amparo would take me there herself, if I would come by at about 7 p.m., which I would.

With an hour to wait, I took myself to the Cathedral and hugged Santiago again, prayed at the crypt where his remains lie, and seeing the priest who had heard my confession last time, went over to talk to him. I confessed myself to be conceited and impatient, and noted that I resembled Martha, who was too busy attending to little details to hear Christ's lesson, to which her sister Mary listened closely.

"'Marta, Marta', he rebuked her. 'Your sister has had the better part'" the priest said, quoting the New Testament passage. "Well, try to devote a little time to contemplation. It is a mercy God gives us. For your penance say two 'Our father's. 'And now through the power of the Holy Spirit I absolve you of your sins and grant you peace and pardon, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.'"

***

The Museo de Azabache is more of a showcase for the sale of the jet jewelry in the window than a museum as a curator might define one. However, it does have some unique and very old pieces on view, as well as an instructional film that explains its history and why Santiago was known as a center of jet carving. The reasons being two: that the finest source of jet in the world is in the province next door, Asturias; and, that the guild of jet carvers was able, from the middle ages until the wars of the 17th and 18th centuries, to profit from the steady influx of pilgrims to Santiago, who wanted a souvenir of the cathedral city. In Rome, the Castellani and other jewelers made copies of Etruscan jewelry for pilgrims there to remember their trips by, in Santiago it was jet objects: rosaries, scallop shells, crucifixes, statues of Santiago, that the hundred or so sellers of jet objects on the street known as the acebecheria/azabacheria depended on for their livelihoods.

With the Hundred Years War and other conflicts discouraging pilgrims from going to Santiago, the guild went into decline, with fewer carvers and fewer traders. In the mid-19th century, Rodriguez Meyer founded a school of carving which incorporated other precious materials --coral, amethysts, amber-- into jet pieces. The difficulty of jet carving is not that it is difficult to carve, but that not being a true mineral (it is fossilized wood), its internal structure is more fragile. Carving in jet predates Christianity: Among the pieces on display in the collection are figas --images of a fist with the thumb pushing through the index and middle finger, a protection against evil. At one time, this talisman was proscribed by the Roman Catholic Church as a pagan holdover. However, Gallego carvers engaged in a bit of syncretism, knowing the thumb showing through the fist was still believed to be potent: the carvers would carve a small figure of Santiago in the form of a pendant, making the platform at the bottom incorporate a figa. The figa is very popular in the Caribbean, where babies are often given a gold chain with a tiny figa to wear around their throats to protect them.

May 27, 2012
Rain, Rain Go Away

I ride the bicycle across the bridge over the Rio Maior and make it to the 9:30 a.m. Mass at Santa Marina de Esteiro just before it starts. Yesterday the estuary was dry, but thanks to the heavy rains over night, it is full again. Passing by on the way to Muros then, I saw a woman dressed in rubber boots, a kerchief on her head, an apron over her dress, gleaning. While the mollusk beds are private property and off limits, any piece of shellfish that detaches from the bed can be culled. Although probably not the best, they count for something, and little gets wasted here.

The priest comes in wearing red vestments, turns on the lights, light the candles and starts the Mass, droning. He never seems to make contact with his parishoners. A short, elderly, bald man, he is like every priest I have ever seen in Galicia, a relic of the old school, when priests said the sacraments like incantations. Of course, such small villages are not sent the cream of the seminaries, but the villagers know tha it is the participation in the Mass that makes for salvation, not the quality of the celebrant. The audience is mainly women, many dressed in black, a few wearing mantillas.

I see Maria Rama Mayo in the pew opposite, where she sits alone. At Mass' end, I greet her. She is just as nice as when I went to see her about the error in the catastro, although she tells me that she cannot go with me to Muros, because she has workmen coming to the house. I explain that it will a long time before I get to the problem posed by the misnamed parcel, and that it will be months, if not a year, before I might call on her again about the parcel.

"Oh well, then. I am glad to see you, and wish you well. Now I have to meet the people in that car over there, who are taking me back home."

Maria Rama Mayo leaves and two other women of about the same age stop me. One is the woman in the pew where I sat, who told me during the "Peace",

"You are not from here. If you need anything, just ask."

Once again, she tells me this, and then asks from where I am. She is expecting a woman --not a Gallega who will visit, and am I a friend of hers? I explain that I am a Gallega and whose daughter again. Suddenly the woman next to her, a youthful looking woman with natural salt-and-pepper hair exclaims softly,

"Antonio! He lived next door to us. I am Dominga--"

Whereupon she gives me a kiss, as does the other woman, whose name is Maria.

"I remember you and your sister --Jazmin-- as children. You were in Lestelle, and your father had to go outside to keep you busy, playing ball, because you were so active."

And so we go on to talk a bit. Dominga worked for twenty-three years in Baltimore, Maryland, two years in a doctor's office, twenty-one in a bakery. She is healthy-looking and energetic.

"I walk home from here, up and down. I don't live in Lestelle any more, but I go up there to visit, and I come down, and so I go back and forth as I please."

We kiss again, Maria tells me where she lives, by the beach, in case I want to have a cup of coffee, as I am so close to her, staying at my Socorro's. The women set out in opposite directions, and I cross the street to where my bicycle is locked up. I ride over the bridge and see Dominga walking along briskly, I pass her, and call out one last greeting. She smiles, lifts her umbrella and my duty is done.


I call Francisco to confirm that I will leave tomorrow afternoon if I can see the notario and return my bicycle. Francisco is in agreement with my plan, but wants to add a detail. He has not heard from Monica de Carabinas, and thinks that there might be a record of the land exchange in the land registry office.

"Weren't we just there?"

"No, this is another office, which is on the outskirts of Muros. If there were an exchange, it might be on record."

We agree to meet at eight thirty in the morning.

***

I have called the Altair, the hotel in Santiago to see whether they have a room for me for tomorrow night to add on to my two nights Tuesday and Wednesday. There is no problem, they have three available, and even if they were to be taken, their hotel next door would have something.

***

Just as I am about to leave to have a morning coffee at Torres', the intercom buzzer rings: it is Socorro's sister Pepita, and could she come up. Of course. I buzz her in.

I open the apartment door to greet her, and in a few seconds, the elevator door opens to reveal an older woman wearing a stylish jacket in the style of Chanel and a very slender, a tall, blue-eyed young woman with blond, highlighted hair cut in a choppy style of different lengths: Pepita and her daughter.

I invite them in, but I cannot offer them coffee, so I ask them to sit down at the dining room table in the largest room in Socorro's apartment, an unfurnished living room.

"Socorro called me and asked whether you saw me, and I said 'No', and she said 'She told me she saw you --she must have been confused--'"

"Yes, I have seen so many people", I apologize, enumerating a few names.

"--Of course! No matter. And now, how are you? How is your sister?"

I fill them in on the details of my life, of my sister's life, of my father and mother's death, whatever they want to know.

As to death, it is a familiar: Pepita's daughter (whose name I didn't catch) lost her husband to stomach cancer ten years ago, leaving her with two young children. While Pepita has very vivid memories of me, remembers a photo taken of me with everyone in 1985 with her sister, Rosa, I cannot remember her. In fact, I did not remember that Socorro had two sisters: I thought she was an only child.

--There is such a thing as having too much family, perhaps.


Pepita and her daughter, having discharged their social obligation to me, and I to them, start to leave. I am going out to have my coffee, so I walk out with them. I walk them to their car, and they are off, looking straight ahead.

***

I have my coffee at Torres', answer my e-mails, and watch the time: I want to bicycle to Freijo/Freixo and it will take about twenty minutes. It is not to be, however. The sprinkle that fell while I was in church dissipated without a trace of a follow on, but it is now pouring. There is no question of my taking the bicycle to Sarita's.

I pack up and run to the apartment to grab the bottle of Azpilicueta --a Rioja tinto that I got to know in Santiago-- and make it to the place where I have been told the bus will stop. I call Sarita, who tells me her daughter Betty will pick me up if I miss the bus, but I don't want to miss the bus. So I stand under an eave and wait, while it rains.

Shortly after 1 p.m., a bus appears, but it passes me by. Perplexed, I return to the estanco, whose owner told me to wait under the eave. Don't worry, he says, that wasn't the bus --it's too soon.

The bus shows up at about 1:25 p.m., and I board. I pass the driver a ten Euro bill, and he asks me whether I have anything smaller. No, I say, and he asks me again: do I have anything smaller. No, I say again.

Well, this bill is not acceptable anyway, he says, holding it up to the light. It is missing ____ (I don't know what.) Look, he says, it is frayed in the middle. Who gave you this?

--I got it at Torres'.

--Well, go back there, and get another one in exchange for this one. I will wait for you.


I find this difficult to believe based on my experience with New York City bus drivers, but I descend the bus, and start walking in what is now a drizzle. The estanco is closer than Torres', so I stop in there, and ask the proprietor if he would change the bill for two fives --and I buy a newspaper. He asks whether I want coins, and makes change. I go back to the bus stop, where the driver is waiting, as he promised. He makes change, and we are off.

I reach Sarita's, walking through the lovely garden, where she is just as last time, cutting flowers. I go inside, and she shows me the rooms she did not show me last time, and in a minute, Betty, her daughter comes downstairs.

Betty is a cardiologist in Santiago, specializing in reading echocardiograms. She is forty years old, the mother of an eighteen-month old boy and looks much younger than her years. Her husband, a Gallego she met at a local dance, works for Hugo Boss in Madrid. He commutes weekends to Oleiros, a suburb outside La Coruna, where they live, and consider the family home.

Sarita, again, does not skimp on food: we start with mussels, then move to ensaladilla rusa --potato salad with tuna, asparagus, green peas and lots of mayonnaise. This is followed by leg of lamb with mashed potatoes. The lamb pieces are chunks, just the way I remember my mother would make them. After these, there are cherries and melon and coffee. I brought the wine, and some chocolate and giant raisins made of moscatel grapes. It is just a pleasure being with Sarita and Betty: they understand about the travails of trying to settle a land dispute, and they appreciate the comic aspects of dealing with double surnames. At the end of this lovely afternoon, Betty drives me to Socorro's and we promise to keep in touch.


***

By now it is almost six p.m., and it is now looking light outside: tomorrow is supposed to be a beautiful day. I, however, have to start cleaning up the apartment in anticipation of my departure tomorrow. If I can, I will leave directly from Muros. Francisco thinks there is some way he can get the bicycle in the back seat of the car, so I don't have to ride it all the way to Muros. This, too, is funny to me: the bicycle is a mountain bike, and I do not want to ruin the back seat of Francisco's car.

"What ruin! If we can get it in there, no problem. I think we can."

Saturday, May 26, 2012
Muros

Sure enough, it rains during the night, and in the morning. I go over to Torres' for my morning coffee, computer in tow. I spend the morning and early afternoon packing for a likely Monday afternoon departure for Santiago. I also try to confirm my flight to Dublin Thursday, as well as my return to New York June 11.

I mistakenly erased my flight details earlier in the journey, and I now have no booking number for the Santiago flight, although I have one for Dublin. Notwithstanding, I can get nowhere on the Aer Lingus website. I try the number at the Santiago airport, but no one is there on weekends. At the suggestion of the recorded message, I try Dublin, but no variation on the number given gets me through on my mobile. I will have to try to straighten out the fights from Santiago on Monday or Tuesday.

Having done all I can, it is now three p.m., still early enough for me to bike to Muros. I dress for rain, and set out. There are parts of the road that rise and are harder peddling, but I make it there by 4:30 p.m., and head for the pulperia on the marina, where I had lunch earlier in the week.

It is closed. I go to the one next door, but the kitchen is closed.

"That's the way it is, I don't make the rules", says Angel, the young man behind the bar. You can try getting something at Macburger 200 meters away."

I thank him for the suggestion, but demur, asking if a bakery might be open: I can get some empanada gallega there. Angel tells me to go up Rua Ancha (Wide Street) and turn right: there is a bakery there.

I do as he says, and find the bakery, but no empanada. There are four bakeries in Muros, a town of 8,000 people, the baker tells me, and points me in the direction of the next one, down a back street. I am not sure I am on the right path, so I stop a man walking in the opposite direction. He shows me the way, and flirts a little, saying that it is just 200 meters away, but if necessary, he would carry me there. I laugh and go on my way.

I find the bakery, but there is no empanada for sale. I do see a rustic bar, two tables set flush against the wall under overhanging eaves that protect against the rain, and a few more beyond. The sign says Eladio and tapas, so I decide to give it a try.

The young man behind the bar has a big head of brown curly hair, and looks very much like the heavy set man with a pony tail wearing an apron, sitting outside. There is also a youngish woman, draped like an odalisque over a tall pile of boxes next to the kitchen in the back, perpendicular to the bar. When I ask her whether they would serve tapas, she says they only serve raciones, that is, large portions. No problem.

I ask if they have pimientos de Padron, but they don't. They don't have empanadas, either. They have shellfish. So I order a glass of tinto, chipirones a la plancha (grilled baby squid) and langostinos (king prawns), also a la plancha.

In a few minutes, out come the wine and the chipirones: they are bathed in golden olive oil sprinkled with minced garlic and onions, with lemon on the side. They are mouth-watering. The red wine sets them off very well.

Just then, who comes by, but the flirtatious man. He is about sixty, stocky, blondish, wearing eyeglasses in a contemporary frame. He stops right in front of me as I am eating, perches himself against the overhanging eave, and begins.

"You are beautiful, you know that? What are you doing here? Why don't you come next door --I will treat you to dinner. This is not my place, so why not come next door? --Why are you laughing?"

I am laughing because I have not heard this sort of patter since the last time I was in Galicia, and I recognize it as a relic of the old courtship pattern. We go back and forth this way for about fifteen minutes, with him every so often interrupting his song to say,

"I was a foreman on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico for a Houston company for thirty three years--"

"That's why you speak Gallego with a Texas accent", I return, and we are off again, with him uttering sweet nothings, and I breaking into laughter at them. His name is Jesus, and finally he gives up.

The chipirones demolished, I attack the langostinos, which are grilled with olive oil, minced garlic and paprika. LIke the chipirones, they are redolent of the sea. With your fingers you open the heads and suck out the juice and the roe, then pull off the tail, peel off the feelers and husk the shell to eat the body. You have to be dexterous, and even so, your hands and fingers become covered with the oily seasoning. As I am doing this, I am thinking "God made these creatures so we could enjoy them this way, His gifts to us from the sea", these fruits of the ocean.

When I am done and paid, I talk a bit to Eladio, who has returned to his chair after making me my raciones. I ask how the sofrito, the seasoning, is made, and he tells me. I praise the food and its freshness, and he tells me

"The chipirones you just had came off the boat an hour ago; And the langostinos were alive before I cooked them for you."

It has always been my memory that the Costa de la Muerte/Costa da Morte --the "Coast of Death"--, which begins here, has the finest shellfish I have ever tasted, and nothing has changed, only perhaps there is less reason to name Muros' streets Rua do Sufrimentos --Street of Sufferings; or the church on the heights Nuestra Senora das Angustias --Our Lady of the Agonies. Yet the collective memory remembers that, as my father used to say, in reference to its perils, "You have to respect the sea."

Nearby from where I had my feast at Eladio's, at the end of the marina, there is a life sized green bronze statue of an elderly woman, covered, from the kerchief on her head. to her skirts and shawl, in the traditional peasants' daily homespun, presumably in the black of mourning. She is sitting on a stone that might be in front of her house. She is looking out to sea.

Her features are careworn and furrowed with anxiety; and the look in her eyes, as she looks out, seem to reflect a knowledge that that the sea has turned before, and can turn again, against the men in the boats. Inscribed there, at the base of the statue in Galician, at the base's top, are the words

We fix our eyes on the sea, on the boat, on our...

Below this, at the bottom of the base, is another:

Homage of seamen who consider the sea a Holy Land...

Cast in 1995, it was given to Muros in recognition of the contributions of the seagoing families of the Coast of Death by the government of the Province of La Coruna, in honor of the men who work these most proliferous of sea beds.

Friday, May 25, 2012
9:45 p.m.
White Nights

It feels so odd to be writing this with it still light outside, as if I were in a small village in Scandinavia. I went out for a bicycle ride earlier, to the other side of town, on the other side of this part of the estuary. The houses are larger, with more land between them, not built close together as they are in Mayo and Lestelle. Go over the bridge over the Rio Maior and take a side road on the left, and you reach the parish church, Santa Marina do Esteiro. I ride past the gate and look around. It is a small stone building with a statue of Christ extending his arms out wide atop its tiny steeple. Returning to the main road, I ride up towards the top of the hill and then turn around. The road on my left descends sharply towards the water, so I take it for a bit: it leads to the cannery by the water. Not too interesting, so I turn around and come back to the main road.

Earlier, Francisco took me to the cemetery in another part of the town, where Juanito, Socorro's husband, is buried. in an area uphill called Solleiros. Here many of the old stone houses have been power-washed, revealing a light-colored caramel stone and mortar. These old, once grimy-grey houses look as if they are new now. The stone is warm and tactile, their enduring beauty beckons to me.

We reach the cemetery The cemetery has been created in a clearing in the woods, which rise behind, giving the cemetery the appearance of being enfolded in them. It underwent major renovation two years ago. In the grounds, where there are flowers everywhere, a schoolmate of Francisco's, Oscar, is working on putting in new marble steps, a last bit of renovation. Oscar and Francisco exchange a few words, then we go to visit Juanito, who was known hereabouts by his nickname, Picheiro.

Instead of burying in the earth, which, subject to Galicia's natural wetness, will easily shift, above-ground burial is more common. Socorro has purchased an entire vertical line in a pantheon for herself and her husband and daughters, four good-sized niches made of pale grey granite striated with white. Juanito is buried in the second one.

Juanito was stocky, blond-haired and blue-eyed, with small features, lively and quick, possessed of a sharp sense of humor. Enterprising and determined, in the 1960s, when my sister and I were teenagers, he jumped ship in Baltimore, Maryland and had a taxi drive him to my parents' in New York City. He arrived in the middle of the night, which was very exciting for my sister and me, as my parents, my sister and I were invariably in bed by 11 p.m.. Juanito stayed with us for a month, until he found a place to live and a job. Socorro was my father's niece, and Juanito was a nephew by marriage, so that meant helping him out. Which posed no problems, as all Juanito wanted to do was find work, and an apartment and bring Socorro and his daughters over once he did. All of which came to pass. He became a skilled painter of Manhattan's gilded building facades, applying gold leaf to the Crown Building on Fifth Avenue, among others. Once, faced with a new and untrusting supervisor, who hovered while Juanito was applying the leaf, Juanito retorted,

"If I was going to steal, believe me, it wouldn't be this miserable amount, which is not worth my time. If I was going to steal, believe me, I would make it worth it. So leave me alone and find something else to do."


He could not have a finer resting place. Against the background of the pines and the sky, the simple stylized crosses at the top of the columns of pantheones parade, one after the other. It is all very peaceful, for those resting as well as those visiting.

***

And despite that inward quality to life here that finds its culmination in the niches of the cemetery, the daily reality is a bit too quiet for me. Of course, I could leave for Santiago earlier than Tuesday morning, finding a hotel there, but it would be unkind to Francisco, who wants to see my land rush through to the end.

If, then, I stay the weekend, it will be challenging passing the time: The only papers for sale at the estanco, (the combined smoke shop, candy store and newsstand) are regional ones. There is no movie theatre. There is no shopping. There are no gourmet foods to buy, there are no new dishes to try in local restaurants, there are no cooking classes. There is no adult education program. There are no team sports, although there are teenagers. There is no support group other than that of family, there is no organized activity other than that driven by work or family, with family being the more important of the two. All the families I have seen appear to be quite cohesive, though, younger family members easily accepting their obligation to care for the older, and the individual's personal wishes subordinate to the family's demands.


During the day everyone does what they normally do, which seems to be either going to work on the estuary (minding the shellfish beds,or catching fish); or working in a government office, or teaching, or working in the small local clinic, or watching children. Most people go home to eat lunch, as everything closes from one or two p.m. until four or five p.m. And "closed" means you rarely see anyone on the streets between those hours. Everything reopens at four or five o'clock, business continuing until eight or eight-thirty p.m., with not much perceptible difference in the street traffic. After everything closes, the streets are desolate again. Most people go home and watch television, eat and go to bed. Those with a bit more money go to the bar-cafes, have a beer or a soda or a coffee with a shot of something and read the newspaper, or watch a soccer match on television until it is time to go home. The one constant is the noise of cars on the one road, which never seems to let up.

Televisions are always on in the background, and not just in the bar-cafes: the television remained on throughout my long lunch with Sarita Tuesday, it was on when I visited Antonio Caamano Torres today, and when Francisco took me to his house, he turned on the television as soon as he got in. I imagine that this is not unusual, that most people in Esteiro, in Lestelle, in Freijo/Freixo, in Mayo, Paxareiras, Abelleira and all the nooks and crannies between Muros and Noya on the estuary, do the same . It is easy to understand why: no one openly lusts for the world outside, but television allows villagers to feel connected to it, to judge it, and thereby feel more satisfied with their own lives, which lack of most of the emblems of contemporary affluence. Yet they possess what seems an enviable certainty, one born of the demands of the the estuary and the fields.

The landscape wedges itself in my brain, dominating the reality, as it must that of those who grew up here and know nothing else. It is more important to know how to get a hot-water-heater to work (I have been without hot water since Wednesday, which is telling), than it is to talk about things in books, if you are going to live here. I brought four interesting books in French with me to pass the hours, but I cannot motivate myself to pick up one: who would I talk to about them?

It is raining very hard outside and windy. It looks as though predictions of rain all day tomorrow may be coming true. If tomorrow is rainy, bicycling any distance will be inadvisable, let alone aiming to make it to Finisterre and back, seventy-five kilometers each way. I could take the Castro Mil bus there, but Finisterre in a driving rain storm is a fool's errand.

Friday, Mayt 25, 2012
The Sabila Parcel

Francisco picks me up promptly at nine a.m., and we are off to Muros City Hall. I wonder whether Moncho, the funcionario who printed out the documentation for me for the other parcel in Mayo in Esteiro will be prepared to help again, particularly as I am claiming land not in my father's name by dint of the error in the land survey. However, I need not have worried: Using the number Jose Mayo Rama gave me, Moncho finds the survey map with all the Sabila parcels and gives me the names of all those who are registered as owners. The survey map also lists the name on the parcel that my father originally owned and exchanged for a Sabila parcel: it is in the name of Josefina Leston Pineiro. Interestingly, the house itself, another parcel, is in no one's name and bears a question mark. Despite being unidentified to anyone, locally, the house is known as Casa do Carabinas, after the family of the same name.

The surveyor lists one parcel #195, the parcel next to the corner parcel. It seems to correspond to the lot Jose and his Maruja are growing on, and whose dimensions they pointed out. However, even if Jose and Maruja told the surveyor that the land belongs to a man who lives in the United States, the parcel is in the name of Maria Rama Mayo --"Yes" --the inverse of Mayo Rama the builder's two surnames. It would be helpful to see Jose Mayo Rama to confirm that the parcel I think my father's is the one he thinks, so Francisco and I drive to see him again.

However, he is not at home, indeed, no one is at home. So Francisco and I walk over to the house with the garden that my father gave in exchange for a Sabila parcel. We find Alberto, a neighbor of that house, coming out of his door. He asks us in and looks at the map and tells us to see the lady across the way, who can tell us where to find Maria Rama Mayo, as she is a relative.

We walk over to where an elderly woman is walking with a large, freshly skinner, plucked and chopped chicken on a plate. Francisco explains our purpose and she points us in the direction of Maria Rama Mayo. Just then, another neighbor walks up and joins the conversation. An extended exchange follows, in which both women discuss in detail which parcel belongs to who, who works a parcel although it is not theirs, and who they inherited if from. After a few minutes we can leave, offering our thanks for the help.

We drive up to Mayo and following a winding road, come to a house on the edge of the road before its end. We ring the doorbell and out comes a lovely, youthful-looking woman in her seventies, wearing extensive mascara to highlight her eyes. She is Maria Rama Mayo.

Francisco explains our mission, and she invites us in to talk. Her daughter is there, and a few minutes later, her son, who lives in the Canary Islands, also joins us. I pull out the papers and explain that a parcel I believe belongs to my father, acquired in exchange, is erroneously listed in her name.

What might have provoked angry denials elsewhere, prompts throughful consideration here. All the Sabilas fincas have names attached to them. Maria Rama Mayo knows one of them is hers. In fact, she has some documentation to prove it. Which means either that the surveyor correctly identified the parcel to her, or that the surveyor incorrectly identified my father's parcel to her and someone else's name is attached to her parcel. The only way to know is to talk to Jose Rama Mayo.

Moncho in the land office told us that in order to correct an error in the Catastro the person declaring the identification of the property to him is erroneous has to sign a document drawn up by the notario. The person claiming the parcel has to sign another document, also drafted by the notario. Maria Rama Mayo would be willing to travel with us to Muros to sign the document on Monday. I call the notario's office and again speak to Lolis, who tells us to come by before two o'clock to discuss the matter in detail.

Maria Rama Mayo's son Jose Manuel has a concern that perhaps his mother has been paying real property taxes on the parcel which my sister and I would have to reimburse, but once Francisco explains that the taxes on rural properties were lifted many years ago, he, too, supports his mother in her decision. Everyone approves my gesture of trying to make sense of my father's holdings --Jose Manuel admits that he too, has to attend to this, but has not the slightest idea about what properties his mother owns or where they are. We exchange telephone numbers and addresses: perhaps I can help him out when the time comes.

Back to Muros again, and up the stairs to the notario's office to see Lolis. The waiting room is full. Not everyone there has a matter to discuss, family members accompany those who have to see Lolis or the notario, who works behind a closed door and speaks to clients but rarely. A pile of magazines, the Semana title --a sort of People of the titled and wealthy in Spain-- is the only reading matter available. I flip through the photos of Isabel Preysler, the Phillipine beauty who left husband Julio iglesias for her second, the Marques de Grinon; Isabel Sartorius, the first love of the heir to the Spanish throne, Felipe, the Prince of Asturias; and of Beatrix of Holland, whose son is in a coma after being smothered in an avalanche; and many others --who are always well-dressed in conservative, formal styles, whose problems are like ours and whose thoughts are offered as instructive in dealing with our own. I am about to scream with boredom when, the penultimate client dealt with, Lolis calls us in.

"Yes", the documents can be drawn up in the absence of documentation, but it will not be sufficient to have Maria Rama Mayo sign, two witnesses who share her belief also have to sign. The cost of the document: fifty Euros. My sister and I will have to sign documents as my father's heirs that we claim the property disclaimed. Cost: fifty Euros.

"Don't come Monday --come Tuesday, and I can prepare the disclaimer before you leave for Santiago", she tells me, shutting down the office for the week.

***

So now three people have to go to Muros Tuesday: Jose Mayo Rama and his wife, Maruja, as witnesses of the disclaimer of Maria Ramo Maya. This all assumes that parcel #195 is the parcel my father exchanged for the parcel that belonged to Carabinas. If it is the one next to that of Maria Ramo Maya, then it is the parcel identified to Antonio Caamano Torres, as the next parcel belongs to Jose Mayo Rama, the builder who met with my father and mother, who works their land, who built the house for Ramito and Sarita, and who owns the house two doors down.

Francisco and I agree to stop for lunch separately and regoup at four o'clock. At that time we will try to see Jose Mayo Rama; or failing that try to find Antonio Caamano Torres.

***

Francisco shows up a little after four, and he has a good idea.

"Look, your father exchanged his property with Carabinas. His daughter, Monica, is a friend of mine --her husband is a cousin. So I called her mother-in-law, and explained to her the situation. She says her daughter has all the papers as she lives in the house now. She told us to go see her. She works in the supermarket down the road, and starts work at 4:30 p.m. Let's go see her. If she can find the document proving that she and your father exchanged the properties, then you have some definite proof that the property is his."

So we drive over to the supermarket, and there, in a uniform, stands a pert and pretty young woman, Monica de Carabinas. Francisco introduces me and explains my situation. I write down my telephone number and Francisco's, my father's name and a word or two about the exchange. She promises to look among the documents relating to the house and the grounds and to call us this weekend.

We go to see whether Jose Mayo Rama is returned to his house, but again, no luck. We run into a woman we saw before, who gives us her view on the subject of the mis-identified property, and we are off again, this time to find the other person who shares a property line with my father's parcel, Antonio Caamano Torres.

We have been told he has been working his field, but when we go there, he is gone. We drive to his home and his daughter emerges. Her father is upstairs. She calls to him, and out comes a grizzled man, with glasses, skin red-brown from the sun. He knows Francisco so we are welcomed inside. When we explain our purpose, he reaches for a sheaf of papers he has handy. The very first thing he does is pull out a document that specifies what agricultural properties he inherited from his father, who died in 2000. He finds the property we found on the property map, which is called "Savilas", with a :v". The description contains two errors: it states correctly that on two sides the property is bordered by a wall; however, on one side the property is not in the name of Jose Rama Mayo, but his sister. On the other side it appears to border on that that of Maria Rama Mayo. So documents are beginning to carry the original error of the survey forward.

Even if Monica de Carabinas comes up with the evidence of the exchange of the land, Maria Rama Mayo, Jose Mayo Rama and his wife have to be willing to come to Muros on Tuesday to sign the document the notario would prepare. Jose Mayo Rama has been out all day because he went to Santiago in the morning to have outpatient surgery on a fistula. The likelihood of my being able to establish a claim to my father's plot is growing dimmer. Notwithstanding, it has been great fun to learn that, the controversed property notwithstanding, my sister and I are, like Queen Elizabeth, "land rich, but cash poor".

Francisco and I agree to speak on Sunday night around seven, to see whether there are any new developments. If not, we both think, the matter is closed.

Thursday, May 24, 2012
Esteiro to Outes

Francisco arrives at quarter of nine the next morning, ready to go. I have had a restless night, due to the failure of the hot water heater, which is powered by gas. It was turned on, alog with the gas, but the pilot light has gone on. In the middle of the night I decide to turn off the gas line, but never gt back to sleep. So in the morning, a cup of coffee is in order. I find that there is a cafe across the street that caters to fishermen going to work on the estuary early: it opens at 7:30 a.m. Carmina, the woman behind the bar, makes a great cup of coffee, and it is that I am carrying back when I see Francisco.

Francisco is a little deaf, so he does not hear me call.

"Someone passing by told me you were calling, but I didn't recognize you. I don't hear too well, so I didn't realize it was you."

Our plan is to go to the land records office and see what we can find under my father's name there. It takes about twenty minutes to get there, during which time I explain to Francisco that I have the original hijuela to return to him, but I also have two little gifts: a tiny reading light and a small head lamp, both of which I bought when for the Camino, beforfe I knew that sitting in your bunk reading at night was an unlikely possibility. Francisco's eyes have never been good --he has worn glasses since he was a child, and the head lamp might be useful to him if in the night he has to go out on account of his animals.

He tries to decline the gift, but in lieu of letting me pay for the gas for the trip to Outes (which is completely unacceptable), he finally accepts them.

We drive to Outes and park near the City Hall, a 19th century building which has been completely modernized inside, with glass everywhere and a winding central staircase. The first thing I do is obtain official copies of my father's birth record. The funcionario in the office takes out a book covering the first eleven months of the year 1917, finds my father and proceeds to make me a copy of the two pages of the record.

The book looks very small, so I ask him how many people's births are inscribed in the volume. About two hundred. I wonder how many more were born in December, and in all how many survived the pandemic. With such a small sampling, it would certainly be possible to find out, although my curiosity has to take a back seat to the immediate task of identifying, if possible any parcels listed under my father's name in the land office upstairs.

Francisco and I go up the stairs, past a small corridor of nicely laid out offices with glass walls and doors, and into the land records office, where two civil servants are working. I address myself to the first one I see, a dark-skinned young woman wearing a caramel leather jacket over a flowered blouse.

When I explain my purpose, she prints out a list of all parcels associated with Antonio Bouzas Bouzas. As in Muros, because there is no Carnet de Identidad, the question of whether those parcels are the property of the man of that name who is my father, or another. For a moment we think we might have the problem solved, because modern birth certificates bear the number of the identity card. I take out the birth certificate but there is no such number on it, or a line for it to be inserted. Possibly the identity card was introduced after 1945, when my father came to the United States. This is an issue, but not an insuperable one, in establishing my sister's and my right to my father's properties.

What is interesting is that there are thirty eight properties on the list, amounting to a total acreage of 24, 996 square meters. Along with the one property defeinitely identified in Muros that makes thirty-nine parcels to transfer into my sister's and my name, not counting the hypothetical property in front of Juan de Pachon's house in Estseiro.

There is one snag, though. When I ask whether I can have a copy of the survey maps for the properties and pull out the document the funcionaria in Muros gave me, this becomes an obstacle. Such an obstacle that the young woman's more senior colleague at the back of the light-filled office, asks me to come over to his desk to look at my documentation.

"We are not allowed to print out these except to the legal heirs who prove their heirship."

Discussion between the two civil servants follows, with the result that I cannot get copies of the survey maps from them.

"You have to go to La Coruna to get them. --And it will cost you, in addition to the trip, 16 Euros each. If you want to know who has the adjoining properties as shown on the second page, that is what you will pay," the young woman explains.

I explain my limited time in Galicia and the cost of doing so for perhaps forty properties, and she comes up with a great idea."


"If you don't need the document with the neighboring property owners' names, you can go to any library and print out the top page, which will cost you nothing." Then she shows me to the website for the Catastro, the land survey office and how to see the survey map for each of the parcels. She writes down the Catastro site internet address and the steps to obtaining a printed copy of each of the parcel maps. Relieved, I thank her for her time, and Francisco and I are off to the library across the street.

It is eleven a.m.: the library, a modest, but well-designed building, is only open for two hours, from eleven to one. Francisco and I find the librarian on the second floor, who explains to us how to use the computer. As I am not a Spanish citizen, we use the number on Francisco's Carnet de Identitdad to open an account. This will be helpful to him when he works on transferring his mother's property between himself and his three siblings.

Francisco and I work for two hours on copying the survey maps for thirty-eight properties. Fortunately, the computer works smoothly, so we start production right away. However, the librarian becomes concerned that we are printing far too many documents. I offer to pay for the cost of any documents I print, I offer to pay for the printer's ink, but they are not equipped to contemplate that anyone might need more than a few pages printed from the computer. It is certainly possible that she will prohibit my copying any more survey maps --but somehow, she changes her mind, and although it is an enormous amount of printing, she lets Francisco and I work until we finish the task, just when the library is about to close for the day.

I offer to get the librarian a cup of coffee, I offer to give her my e-mail address and to help her with anything she might want to know about New York City, but nothing doing. "It's a public service", she says with a smile. I have been very lucky.

There is one more item on the agenda: trying to see Juan de Pachon to see whether he can tell us where the parcel by the road in Esteiro is. Francisco suggests that we visit him after lunch. Francisco has to go home to feed his two chickens, ewe, ram and three lambs, and have something to eat. I offer to take him to lunch, but he gently turns aside the thought as an extravagance. I would not like to go home to eat, but would like to have some empanada gallega for lunch.

"You know what you do: there is a good pastry shop here, and you can buy empanada and eat it at home. You take a nap, after, and I will come pick you up at four p.m. How about that?"

We now have a plan, and Francisco drops me at the apartment, where he will meet me in two hours.

***

The generosity of my father's relatives is extraordinary, but family ties run very deep here. My father and mother posted bond for Francisco when he was detained by immigration, Francisco mentions. He sees helping me as a way of discharging his obligation. We also have a problem in common: getting siblings to agree to cooperate in completing the transfer of property after a parent's death. Talking about this, leads to talking about his grandmother, Tia Maria.


"She couldn't read or write, so my mother, the eldest and the first to go to school, acted as the intermediary for anything that required reading or writing. Then Ramiro was born, and then Pepa, and all were educated. When Tia Maria died, her estate had to be divided among the three, and my mother, because she stayed with her, bot the best parcels, and my aunt and uncle got their statutory share.

"They were unhappy with those portions, so they filed a challenge to the apportionment, which was turned aside as the statutory minimum had been set aside for them. That was, however, the beginning of tensions between them, which are like the tensions between my sisters and brother.

"This is very common, here though. Do you remember the horreo I showed you, and the house for sale alongside? It took those children ten years to finally come to an agreement about selling the property. Parents don't settle these things before they die: even my mother, when my sister Maria told her to transfer the parcels during her lifetime to minimize the chance of disputes among us, became angry. She said 'It looks like you want me dead. --When I'm dead, you figure it out, but I get along in my way now.'"

So talking about a land inheritance is a taboo during the life of the parents, which it becomes an obligation of the children to work out when the last parent has died. Combined with the scattered distribution of small parcels, and the confused documentation of those, the properties become a bone of contention in many families.

***

Francisco meets me a little after 4 o'clock and we head for Jose del Pachon's.in Mayo, the village above Esteiro. The missing parcel supposedly large enough to build a house on is across the way from the builder's, so without phoning in advance, without sending an e-mail or a letter, Francisco takes me there. The large two story house with a second floor patio is the playground of a small boy with curly blond hair and his slightly older sister, who are amusing themselves picking up and putting down a litter of five kittens. An older lady comes out of the house. Francisco says hello and explains to me that this is Jose de Pachon's wife.

Francisco explains the purpose of our visit and Jose's wife indicates the parcel across the way.

"It is from where you see the unfarmed earth to between those trees with the northern and southern stone walls forming the other sides", she says. "Your father exchanged a parcel he had that was smaller but next to wear a family was bullding that house over there" --she points east-- "They wanted a garden attached to the house, so your father made the exchange. And we have been growing on it, but its yours, everyone knows."

At this point, Jose del Pachon, a short man with enormous brown eyes and sturdily built despite his sixty-eight years, comes out. He agrees with all that his wife said and asks us to come inside and whether we want something to drink.

First off, they are glad to know I am interested in settling the estate. Second, Jose del Pachon's real name is Jose Mayo Rama. As a builder he knows a lot about the regulations pertaining to building. He also knew both my mother and father, and tells me that at one point my father and mother approached him about whether it would be possible to build a house on the parcel in front of their house, news to me.


"At the time, it was, but now the authorities have prohibited building on parcels small than 400 square meters. If your land is in the mountains, they will demand that your building lot be as many as 2,000 square meters."

So this is the missing parcel, its ownership by my father is open and notorious, even if there are no papers to demonstrate the exchange. However, it might be possible to find a survey map of the parcel by finding the parcel on which Jose Mayo Rama's house sits. Neither Jose or his wife would have any problem signing an affidavit attesting to their knowledge that the parcel they have been farming belongs to my father.

As Jose and his wife are willing to help, I ask whether they would be willing to look at the survey maps I have for the other thirty-eight properties and tell me whether any one is suitable for building. We go through every one. While several are more than large enough, the land is either in the woods, or pasturage, too far away from sources of electricity or water to build on.

Only the other parcel within Esteiro and under the jurisdiction of Outes might offer a possibility. It is 433 square meters and near Mayo. It is located in a section called Rego Da Lagos. Jose and his wife know the area as Sabila. Every group of parcels has a local name, some of which appear on the survey maps, some which do not, and are known only to locals.

Having gone through forty properties with only one last one offering any possibility of any construction, I ask Jose Mayo Ramo whether my situation is typical for the children of my father's generation.

He looks at me sadly. "Yes, that is the situation we are all in."

***

Francisco and I get in his car and drive up to Mayo. This is a very pretty area, with lots of houses, the ones highest up having a panoramic view over the hillsides and to the estuary and the mountains beyond, on the estuary's other side. Both my cousin Socorro and her daughter Rosa have houses there. Our next stop is the house of Francsco de Rogelia, who grew up in the vicinity of the land in Rego da Lagos, and might be able to point out my father's parcel.

We drive up to the house and encounter a man in blue work pants pushing a wheelbarrow. He is not Francisco, but he calls to his wife to ask whether she would come out. Out comes a woman in her seventies, a crone in pants and top, deeply tanned, speaking the dialect so thickly, I can barely understand her. No, her husband is not home, but about this land, she has the idea that it borders that of a man named Maravilla ("Marvel"), and that of another named Juan de Paris, but she is not sure. Couldn't we ask my cousin?

I say I have my cell phone with me and that we can try to reach her. We do, indeed, find Socorro at home, and I pass the phone over to Francisco de Rogelio's wife, and she and Socorro confer, with the woman making noises in agreement for much of the conversation, then hanging up.

"You have to go to see Lola de Candida at Maravilla's house. She can't walk very well, but if her daughter is there, she can show you. The parcel is next to theirs, by the road.


For the last parcel, 433 square meters, is in the woods. Francisco and I drive to Lola's house and knock on the door, which is open. Out comes a slender woman in her eighties about five feet six inches, walking slowly. Francisco explains that I am Antonio's daughter, and her face lights up.

"Oh, your father was a good person, a very good person. We came to New York when you were just little girls, and they could not have done more for us. --Your mother, too, she was a good person. How happy I am to see you. I heard about you, but I never saw you."

And with that, she kisses me on both cheeks.

As to going to see the parcel in the woods, at first Lola says that she limps and walks with a cane and that it would be better if her daughter showed us. --But of course, she is not there. So she will go and get her slippers and cane and take us at least as far as the road to the wood, if we will driver there.

Lola goes inside and returns wearing a rain hat with her cane, and we are off, driving up the last house in the Mayo, beyond which the road stops and there is only a path through the woods. Lola de Candida gets out and starts walking over the path, slowly, but surely. I am in front, and Francisco behind, looking out for Lola.

"Here is our property. There are markers here, stones in the ground to distinguish what is yours from what is ours. Yours is beyond ours, over where that tree is" --and here she lifts her cane and points-- "and over to the tree line there", she says, pointing across the way. It's good that you are coming to see about what is yours. It would make your father happy."

And that is that. We walk Lola back to the car and expect to drive her back to Casa Maravilla, but she demurs.

"I want to walk, you go ahead. I want to walk."

And so she starts out ahead of us, walking steadily, if slowly back out of the woods and on to the road, stopping by the last house in Mayo to look across from the height to the water and the mountains beyond.

"It's pretty, really pretty" she says, then kisses me good bye and tells me that she hopes to see me again when I come to finish the transferring the parcels and that she is glad she met me.

Only one last task remains, a formality, really. Trying to find the survey map for the parcel opposite Jose Mayo Rama's house that my father took in exchange. Francisco says he will pick me up at nine a.m. tomorrow and take me back to Muros. Perhaps Moncho, who gave me the original survey map, will be willing to find the map associated with Jose Mayo Rama. Jose has given me the number of his Carnet de Identidad, with which all of his properties will be associated. I have only to identify the property that is his home: opposite it will be the property they farm, which my father took in exchange for the house he and my mother never built.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Esteiro to Muros

Muros is an ancient village that pre-dates the Romans. It lies at the end of the estuary which flows into the Atlantic at this point. I have to go there because I want to see a notario to find out what I can about my father's property in Esteiro and Lestelle. There is only one notario in Muros. I find the number in the phone book and call. A woman with an abrupt manner answers. She tells me to come before two p.m.

I make the 11:15 a.m. Castro Mil and arrive in Muros by quarter of twelve. The road winds along the coast, which is covered with pines up to the sandy shore and the beaches. These are unspoiled simple shores with no services. The view will become even more spectacular as the bus approaches Finisterre, its final destination, but I need to get off at Muros, leaving the Dutch and Italian tourists sitting near me behind. Galicia is being discovered.

The woman in the notario's office has some of the worst teeth I have seen in a while, and chews gum vigorously thorughout our conversation. "What is this all about?" she says soon after I start giving her the background. "I want to establish my sister and my right to the parcels left my father by his grandmother", I say.

"Here's what you have to provide me with" she says, and tells me what documents I have to provide her so she can do the paperwork to make the property transfer. She will not tell me what it will cost to do this. I am out of the office in five minutes.

My next stop is the real property department in City Hall, across the tiny plaza. There I have more luck. A civil servant named Moncho spends a few minutes looking up the records and find, under my father's name, a tiny parcel in Esteiro. However, there is no documentation proving that the person listed as the owner of the property is my father and not someone else with the same name, so I will have to verify that. However, the parcel is small, and I have been told by Sarita that there is one of my father's parcels in Esteiro is large enough to build a house on it.

Moncho tells me that in that case, if the relative or relatives can identify the parcel's location and identify it on the survey maps, then I can claim the property as my father's heir. Custom seems to have some weight here. I had learned in law school that custom and usage might be dispositive in the absence of clear legal proof of a claim, but until today, I never came across a case where it still mattered. It seems that now I have. However, I also have clear legal proof about the parcel Moncho found in the records: he prints out the survey map containing the parcel in my father's name and hands it to me: the parcel is 423 square meters large, and is a ribbon of land, surrounded by other, simillar parcels. Moncho has highlighted my father's parcel in green marker so I can place it among all the others.

A little later I have a copy of the hijuela, the document Francisco lent me that enumerated the parcels given to my father and his brother by their grandmother. I call Francisco to tell him that I can return the hijuela to him tomorrow, and that I will go to Outes tomorrow to see what I can unearth in the land records office in Outes. I also need to get a record of my father's birth certificate. Francisco offers to drive me there. He still has not formalized the transfers of property he received from his mother, so the trip will be helpful to him as well.

These "rustic properties", as they are known, are no longer taxed, because their value is negligible. So there is no reason not to establish the ownership, barring an unexpectedly large notario's fee. For the moment, the puzzle is intriguing, and if there is a piece of property large enough to build on near the road in Esteiro, that would be worth purshing.

I call my cousin in Socorro in New York: she is very happy that I am taking on the task of legitimizing my and my sister's ownership of the properties.

"I like how you are handling this: It is a matter of respect for your father. The properties shouldn't be abandoned. Even if they are worthless, they were his. Your mother was always after him to sell them --your mother sold all those she received from her father-- but your father would say 'I don't need to live from those properties, so I am not going to sell them. If my daughters want to sell them when I die, they can do that.'"

When I tell Socorro that i saw Sarita and that she told me that there was a parcel by the road in Esteiro, Socorro tells me where it is.

"It is right in front of the house of the man who built Sarita and Ramiro's house. His name is Jose del Pachon." Another mystery solved.

"Now don't get excited or anxious about any of this", she tells me. "Get as much as you can get done now. --And you will need to get a power of attorney from your sister, and your father's will and his death certificate in New York. Me cago en la madre que te pario! I wish I was there! ("I shit on the mother that bore you!" --this is a common Galician barnyard expression, roughly translatable as By God, I wish I was there! ) But don't worry, you can come here again for a few weeks and take care of all of this by and by."


Then I ask her whether she knows where Tomas and Maria, her grandparents are buried. I thought that I would like to go and visit their graves. They were in their late twenties when they died.

"That I cannot tell you. I know where my maternal grandparents were buried, but I never knew where they were. No one knows. They might have been disinterred and their remains put in a common pit with others when the cemetery was reorganized, but who would know? There I cannot help you."

Poor Tomas and Maria, parents of two lovely toddlers, Benito, born in 1914, five years old; Antonio, born in 1917, two. Dead of the Spanish flu --which killed the healthiest, because it turned their immune systems against them. Tomas and Maria, mowed down in their late twenties in the summer of 1919.