Thursday 29 November 2018

A rose by any other name...

One of the problems I faced over the many years I spent visiting Viana rather than living here was trying to remember everybody's names. As a fairly regular visitor, and a fairly rare English one at that, everybody was kind enough to remember mine. Sure, I got (and get) a few variations of it - I've been called James, Jamie, Jameson and others, but that was more about the difficulty of pronunciation of a name that doesn't really exist here. I knew that they knew me by name and couldn't honestly say the same was true in reverse.

Still, I thought - no problem. There was always the locals' trick to fall back on, which works just as effectively in English. We may call each other 'mate' or something, but here you can be called pretty much anything descriptive that fits, for just me or for me and my missus together, in Galego or Castellano - 'tio', 'chaval', 'caballero', 'joven', 'rapaz', 'Inglés', 'pareja', or most commonly here, 'rey/reina'. This last one literally means 'king/queen', and has got me into trouble because I initially thought it was Spain-wide, but it turns out to be a very local habit. I got some odd looks from friends from other parts of Spain when I used these, so no longer do.

You can be called by whatever you happen to be doing or wearing when greeted, even - 'Good morning, ironer.' 'How's it going, tennis player?' These are all handy ways out which served me well (or badly) until such time as we came here permanently, when I thought I'd easily put names to so many of these familiar faces.

This has been complicated by a number of factors. First and foremost, I'm getting on a bit, the memory is not what it once was and I'm increasingly shit with names. But the locals haven't made it easy for me, either. They seem to share about six names between everybody. There's much. much less variety than I was used to back in London, so for example I know at least three Maria-Josés and I can't tell you how many Josés or Carloses. It doesn't help also that some of the people whose names you were pretty confident of are not called what you thought they were at all because of the absolutely standard practice of changing some of them, just as we do. So where Alexander is likely to be known as Sandy in English, for example, people called Fransisco here are routinely called Paco. Apart from the ones who are called Fran, obviously.

I don't think it's just me for whom this can be problematic. This, for example, though I've changed the specific name and occupation to anonymise it (probably pointlessly because, given what I've said above, it could be about any one of half a dozen people, but anyway...), is an extract of a conversation I once heard:

"You know Lourdes?"
"Which Lourdes?"
"Lourdes, Lourdes's daughter."
"Which Lourdes?"
"The baker."
"Lourdes's daughter is a baker?"
"No, Lourdes, the daughter of Lourdes the baker."
"Oh. No, don't know her. What about her?"

See what I mean?

As if in recognition of this shortage of names (or perhaps in a village-wide plot to confuse the stupid Inglés), everybody has a nickname. Some of the nicknames are echoes of what happens in the UK - the carpenter is known as Chippy, for example. But why the hell is our mechanic friend called Gali - essentially, 'chicken'? Because his dad was called Gali of course. Why was he called Gali, though? Because he kept chickens. Right. Of course nobody else around here keeps chickens(!), so naturally he's the one who became so-known. I don't even know his real name.

In a further twist, some people have multiple nicknames depending on who you're talking to. One acquaintance of ours has at least three. So I still have to use the old tricks more than I like, and more than I thought I'd have to. It's getting there, though - I can now sometimes tell my missus, who's from here, what some people's names are when she doesn't know. She's still way, way ahead of me on all the familial connections, though, seeming to know who's so-and-so's second cousin, who's whatshisname's half brother etc.

Don't even get me started on that. I'll stick to trying to learn all the names for now, thanks.

Sunday 18 November 2018

Well roast my chestnuts, my bread's pregnant.

I mentioned in an earlier post about the importance of chestnuts here. At this time of year, they're everywhere. Many locals have chestnut trees, from which they sell the harvest to dealers who in turn sell them on to supermarkets etc. I confess I'm not much of a fan - I will eat them, roasted, but without much enthusiasm. My partner, though, more typically around here, adores them and will eat them raw, straight off the tree. In the supermarkets I've seen them on sale for over €5 per kilo - while that's obviously a lot more than the growers get for them, it's an indication of how popular they are here.

So popular in fact that they feature as the centrepiece of a yearly celebration called Magosto, not that Galicians need too much of an excuse for a party. Known as Castañadain other parts of Spain, it's not limited to Galicia, being celebrated in several other regions and in Portugal, but evidently takes similar form pretty much everywhere.

We were away for this year's celebration, so the images (which are crap, sorry!) in this entry are from last year, which I did attend. The village's newest bar put on a Magosto of their own this year, which I also got to, and the format was essentially the same on a smaller scale - Galicians know what they like - and went down very well.

While this year's harvest has been good, last year's was disastrous because of the long drought. You wouldn't have thought so from the walk up to the old cattle market where the event was held, though. Giant trucks, their trailers already groaning under the weight of huge numbers of chestnuts, stood silently in the street while still more were being deposited into waiting containers:

Lorry-loads of these, hundreds of thousands of them.
And this in a terrible year.
Harvesting these things is laborious. Machines are available, if you can afford one, to get them off the trees in the first place - they look like an ugly love-child of a combined harvester and a giant hoover. But everybody I know who harvests them has the bastard-spiky cases which they come in removed by hand. So this represents a prodigious effort to get the things to the shops, even in a very low-yield year.

Under the corrugated roof of the market, your three Euros buys you access to essentially unlimited supplies of red wine (very young and not the highlight - best drunk in a Calimocho), barbecued sardines, chestnuts (of course), pregnant bread and bica. Now I love bica - it's a very plain-looking sweet sponge, but if it's made well and it's fresh, it's absolutely fantastic. There is considerable debate about which of the bakeries in the village, and which region of Galicia, produces the best bica. It goes beautifully with coffee and is often served after a big celebratory meal. It also soaks up the local fire water, aguardiente, rather nicely.

But pan preñao, pregnant bread, that was a new one on me. You're given what looks like a plain, warm roll, which at first glance I assumed was to go with the sardines. One bite into it, though, and it becomes clear that it's got a bun in the oven itself:

Congratulations - it's a beautiful, spicy sausage.
A delicious chorizo is hidden inside. This makes the thing very filling but they disappear like, well, hot rolls. People seem to be able to eat several of them. I limited myself to one of them, leaving space for the bica.

There was also, of course, music. Two bands doing their thing - one the typical charanga, playing the usual Spanish style stuff that you'll hear at any such gathering, the other a three-piece featuring a bass and an accordion, who went through a series of rock classics headed up by Smoke on the Water. A bit different from the usual sounds which back up these things.

It was dark and my camera's crap. Sorry.
Our bellies full and warmed nicely by the enormous fire at the back of the market-place, it was time to stroll back down the hill to the main square for a drink or two. Being Galicians, and therefore all serious gastrophiles, talk was of the merits of the bica, and the sardines, and the year's chestnut harvest. I suspect that this year's affair, with the vastly superior haul of castañas this autumn, will have been more cheerful still.

*Castañada better evinces the central role that the chestnuts play in the thing, castaña being the Spanish word for chestnut.