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.