A reunion with (month-and-a-half-)old friends (La Corunha, Spain)

I'm so glad that I planned to stop by La Corunha for a few days on my way east along the north-facing coast of Galicia, Asturias, and Cantabria! I'm staying with Simon, who was my one-man welcoming party when I first arrived to Galicia and with whom I spent that lovely afternoon on the coast (ancient stone dwellings, ancient burial site, long sand dune, and friends: Almudena, Sylvia, Juan, and little Giulia) long ago, when seagull cries were still novel and exhilarating. Now when I hear seagull cries I expect to see a box of dead fish nearby (association), but Simon remains extremely welcoming and kind. He, Almudena and I went walking yesterday night and had a light and very Spanish dinner at a restaurant in the older part of town, after which we came back to the apartment and, by turns, admired and chased their cute chubby rabbit, who is named either Cocky or Cookie. I hope it's Cocky.

I have seen other friends, too! I spent all of this afternoon with Guillermo, Mirela, and their children Nicolas and Nicole, at their home, where we had a very Spanish lunch (featuring olives, pimientos de padron, ham, chicken, bread, ice cream!). Guillermo is the fisherman without whose guidance I would have been totally lost at the docks; Mirela is his wife, without whose help at the early-morning fish auction I would surely have managed to get impaled by a fish hook -- an undignified death. I caught them in the middle of a move; last week they left their apartment to live in the upper floors of a storage unit at the docks, the first floor of which is Guillermo's workshop, where he was making octopus cages today. They are setting everything up themselves -- sinks, tables, shelves, kitchen -- and, during breaks, providing so much attention to their black cocker spaniel that he must be the happiest canine in the world. I like to judge families by the friendliness of their pets, and both Cocky/Cookie and little Hyperactivity Embodied (he has a much nobler name, but I've forgotten it) are excellent representatives for their respective households.

Guillermo and Oscar, the man who drove me from the lonja to their place, told me that fishing has gotten considerably worse in the past ten years. Oscar said that, five years ago, he used to catch five kilos of a certain type of fish; now he catches two kilos on a good day, and good days are few and far between. There are no fish! The type of fishing that he does, minhos, which are long rectangular nets hung vertically in the water so that fish get caught in them, has a theoretical (and legal) maximum length of net per boat. However, Oscar, and every other fisherman who has to support himself and a family, has been increasing the length of net that he puts out every year, only to catch the same amount of fish or less. Oscar attributed this diminishing catch to climate changes and, more importantly, overfishing, about which something should have been done years ago. Now, both he and Guillermo said, the only thing to be done is to wait for the sea to set its own limit; when there are no more fish to catch, the fishermen will have to stop fishing. A lose-lose situation, downward spiral, no good no good.

I haven't yet written about the rest of my stay in Malpica, which was mostly uneventful (in the most neutral sense of the word) but spattered with interesting characters, to whom I'll briefly introduce you! I spent a lot of time at the docks, mostly attending the fish and percebe auctions; at the latter I met Dona (imagine the "n" with a tilde over it) Carmen, an elderly woman who sold her two sons' percebes, and three strapping young lads, Richard, Yarmin, and Ivan, with whom she tried to set me up. Dona Carmen was initially cold towards me -- no smiles, little eye contact -- but I decided later that this was probably due to a hearing impairment; when I spoke very loudly directly into her ear, she responded immediately and with a lot of hand-patting.

Even speaking very loudly directly into her ear might not have been enough to achieve total comprehension, though, because our conversations tended towards the incoherent. For example, I might ask, "Oh, so, you have a son who lives in La Corunha! Do you get to see him a lot?" and she might respond, "I have two sons. One of them is single -- but he's good-looking. And it's not just because I'm his mother! He's a handsome chap. The other one is married, and his wife's name is Maria. But my eldest is single." Being single seemed to be a problem, because when I told her that I was single and traveling alone, she immediately recommended that I find a boyfriend. Later, when I introduced myself to Richard, Yarmin, and Ivan to ask them about their work as percebeiros, she came up to us, patted my hands, and told me, "There, see, now you've met some nice boys." The nice boys took it well. They are a few years older than I am, and have been gathering percebes as a full-time job for several years. Knowing the people who had collected the percebes made watching the auction a much tenser experience. Every time a buyer passed by one of their boxes without displaying the least bit of interest, I booed at them inside my head, which didn't help at all but made the whole affair seem a lot more like a basketball game than a transaction of goods. I was also reminded of the hardships of sea-bound livelihoods -- Richard's father had died eight months ago doing exactly what Richard does almost every day: gathering percebes.

And another anectode: Another afternoon at the docks, I met a man named Paco, who, with minimal prompting, volunteered his life story. He had been, he said, the best percebeiro in Malpica in his day -- I could ask any older person in town! -- and had fulfilled his duty as a parent by providing each of his six children with a place to live. Two of his children still lived at home, but hadn't spoken to him for three years, because he had fallen in love again four years after his wife's death. His children disapproved of the relationship because it had blossomed too soon after their mother passed away, and also because they found the age difference between their father and his new companion appalling: they are 80 and 64, respectively. (I find it so funny that this is an appalling age difference!)

But he was very much in love, and had even proposed to his "amiga" that they move in together to spend the rest of their years building a new life. She also had children, but one of her daughters had turned out "bad." I thought, "Drugs, prison . . . lesbian?!" Yes! Lesbian! Ten points for me! She was, in his words, "lisbana -- I don't know the word -- but, you know, she got together with another woman." I almost laughed out loud, because I immediately thought of a Capitol Steps sketch I heard months ago in which "Sarah Palin" lauded Dick Cheney's foreign relations experience because his daughter is Lebanese. How exciting that Paco's amiga's daughter was Lebanese, too! We talked a bit about parental love, and how it was sometimes difficult to accept that children hadn't turned out quite as expected; at some point, Paco said, "Well, everybody's different." With this he won my heart (he was halfway there already with the late romance). Also, much to my joy, he told me that the Lebanese daughter and her partner had adopted a little girl who was the apple of her grandmother's eye (and Paco's, too, I could tell). Even though the mother and Paco had trouble with the idea that the daughter's romantic partner was a woman, the family was whole. I hope that Paco's children start talking to him again, so that his family becomes whole, too.

Oof! All of these people living their lives! It makes me want to meet everyone in the world.

In other news: I think that I know where I am going to live in Mexico! More information forthcoming.