Galicia, the Switzerland of Spain

by Annette M. B. Meakin

Pheasants are said to have been found in the wood of Cebrero in the province of Lugo, but they have not, as far as I can ascertain, been seen in any other part of Galicia. Pigeons are plentiful everywhere, and the round pigeon-house and dovecots which the Gallegans build for them are both characteristic and picturesque. The pigeon is not considered sacred in Spain, as is the case in Russia; among the Gallegans this bird is quite an ordinary article of food.

But it is for her abundant supply and large variety of both river and salt water fish that Galicia is especially famed. I have already described my visit to the fishermen’s wharf at Coruña, and the way in which ice is specially manufactured to preserve the fish that has to travel to Madrid and other distant towns. The most typical fish of Galicia is the sardine. More than a hundred years ago, on the occasion of the erection of a lighthouse on the coast for the benefit of fishermen, Señor Joseph Cornide[222] published a monograph on the sardine; in 1788 he published a larger work, embracing an account of all the fish caught on the coast of Galicia. The reader must bear in mind that Galicia is bounded on two sides by the sea, and that not only is her coast-line very extensive in proportion to her size, but there are also her wide lochs or rias which run to a considerable distance inland, and meet the rivers that flow down from the mountain outposts of the Pyrenees. The chief capes to north and west are Cape Finisterre and Cape Ortegal.

The sardine, erroneously termed arengus minor (smaller herring), is, as we have seen, the chief source of wealth to the fishermen. Shoals of this fish enter the rias every year from the month of July onward; it resembles more closely the North Sea herring than any other fish, but it is quite distinct. Linnæus classed it amongst the mackerel family. The weeds and other substances that the rivers wash down from the mountains into the rias are just the food that sardines require, and as the mouths of the ria are very wide, and at the same time sheltered from the Atlantic winds, they prove a favourable shelter for these little fish, who, unable to thrive where there is wind and severe cold, come southwards every year in the months of December and January; in stormy weather they leave the surface and cling to the bottom for protection. The Gallegans use cod’s roe as a bait with which to attract them.

There are two sizes of sardines caught on this coast; the smaller ones look very like anchovies, and are called parrochas by the Gallegan fishermen, but if the two are carefully compared it will be found that the anchovy is narrower and has a more pointed head than the sardine; it is covered, moreover, with irregular black spots, and the head, if eaten, leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. The anchovy is frequently eaten raw, and it is also preserved in oil like the sardine.

One result of the increased facilities for exporting fish to other parts of Spain has been a rise in the price of sardines. Whereas they could formerly be bought in Santiago at the rate of a hundred for a penny, they now sell at about a penny a dozen. In 1835, Aquiar wrote that fish was selling by its bulk and not by its weight; and even now, cartloads of sardines are used by the ignorant peasants as manure for their fields.

The Spaniards as a nation consume an enormous amount of dried and salted cod: it is a staple food on fast days. This, then, is another industry in which the Gallegans might make fortunes, but at present even Galicia, where cod is so plentiful, gets her dried cod, bacalao, from Norway. Two millions of dried cod are annually imported to the north coast of Spain; and a Norwegian Consul, who was stationed at Bilbao for several years, tells me that a shipload of Norwegian cod unloads at Bilbao every week. I see that Señor A. Florez has been lecturing in Madrid on the enormous imports from Norway to Spain and their effect upon the latter country.

Señor Francisco Ribas has found in the library of the Marquis de Mos at Tuy a most interesting manuscript book dating from the reign of Carlos III. (eighteenth century), and describing a heated controversy that went on between the Gallegan fishermen and some Catalonians, who had come to Galicia to start fishing industries there and were using a new kind of net, xeito, with which far more fish could be caught than was possible with the antiquated ones used by the natives. In this book there was a copy of the memorial that was sent to the King in the name of all the fishermen on the Gallegan coast, entreating His Majesty to put a stop to the use of the new net, as it was calculated to kill the spawn and ultimately ruin the trade. The Government gathered the opinion of experts on the subject, and came to the conclusion that the fears of the Gallegan fishermen were groundless; so it ended in the universal adoption of the net. I hear that a similar objection was recently raised to the introduction of English and French trawling nets.

Among the various kinds of fish that are caught on the Gallegan coast, the lamprey is especially worthy of mention. The name lamprea, signifying “rock licker,” Latin, lambo, to stick, and petra, a rock, has been given to this fish because it has a habit of attaching itself to rocks and stones by its mouth; it is a cartilaginous fish, and somewhat resembles the eel; its flesh is very indigestible, but the flavour is considered by gourmets to be exquisite. And we all learned at school how our King Henry loved that flavour, not wisely but too well. Spaniards cook them in their own blood, with the addition of a little wine and oil. The best in Galicia come from the neighbourhood of Tuy, Noya, and Padron, but very fine ones are also to be found in many other parts in the months of June and July. Lampreys were regularly sent to Rome from Galicia in the days when Spain was a Roman province; they were a delicacy that was much appreciated by the wealthy patricians, and indeed they are still considered as such even in Galicia. While I was at Santiago, four lampreys caught near Padron were sold in the fishmarket one Sunday morning for ten dollars; they are becoming much more rare than formerly; their skins are exceedingly ugly to look at; they abound in the Bay of Biscay, and from thence enter the wide rias and rivers of Galicia. There is also a river lamprey, a foot long; this fish has remarkably strong teeth; on its tongue are two rows of objects that resemble teeth, and it moves its tongue backwards and forwards like the sucker of a pump when imbibing other fish as food.

The turbot is fairly plentiful. Oysters from Carril, which are the largest, sell in Santiago at the rate of twenty shillings per hundred, while smaller ones may be had for about seven shillings per hundred, and a very small kind called morunchos may be had at three shillings per hundred. My hostess informed me that she liked these last best of all, and that they were muy ricititos (very rich little things). Molina, writing in the middle of the sixteenth century, speaks of Carril as famous for its oysters. “They fill ships with them,” he writes, “and supply all Castille, and the greater part of Spain. The oyster,” he adds naïvely, “is an article which is prized wherever it is sent.” Oysters abound in all the rias of Vigo, Arosa, and Ferrol. Cornide reminds us that the ancients prized those caught on the coast of Britain above all others. Apacius, the celebrated glutton, possessed the art of keeping them a very long time, and when Trajan was in Persia he was supplied with oysters from Italy; they appear to have been kept in barrels, as in our day, so closely packed that the shells could not open. The Spaniards considered them more wholesome when eaten raw, but they constantly fry them in oil, and serve them up in a “James” shell.

I have written at length in another chapter about the famous scallop shells, pecten veneris, called vieira in Galicia, and worn by pilgrims returning from the sepulchre of St. James, and put up over the doors of the inns at which they lodged in Santiago. Scallops are not too sacred to be eaten even in Galicia, and, but for their strong fishy smell, they would make a fair substitute for oysters.