Day 36

Luarca was a charming coastal village, the harbour in the centre of town opening up to the Bay of Biscay and home to a fleet of beautiful little boats, most of them used for fishing, the posh tourist vessels completely absent. “You are in luck” the waitress said, “because of yesterday’s festivities all the boats are decorated”. I had indeed noticed the garlands in-between the masts of most boats. A party victim was still seated at the bar, asleep, an open bottle of beer in front of him. He smelled horrible and when he opened his eyes for a moment he didn’t seem to register anything.
I was still in Asturias, it would have been nice to just walk along the coast but if I wanted to arrive on the 20th as planned, there were only 5 walking days left and I wanted to have some time in Galicia as well.
A few people were waiting at the station. There was no ticket office, no information and no train arrived at the time it was supposed to. A man with a big backpack noticed my confusion and showed me his phone, it said the train was arriving in 23 minutes. He pointed at a QR code on one of the windows, scanning it gave you the real-time location of the train and the remaining minutes to the station. “Modern technology keeps amazing me” I said, pronouncing the Spanish words clearly since he spoke like somebody who couldn’t hear his own words but was eager to talk. He confirmed when i asked if he could read my lips. We talked for a while about where we walked and where we were heading and I was curious what his experience was as a deaf person walking the Camino but I didn’t ask because it must be something a lot of people ask him and it is tiring to answer the usual questions in new encounters.
I hadn’t thought through where I was going to get out so I just followed his example and bought a ticket to Tapia de Casariego, “one of the most beautiful villages in Asturias”. From Tapia station it was a 2 hour walk to Ribadeo, my goal for the day, but when I checked my map and saw that the village was nowhere near the station and visiting it would add 2 hours to the route, I leaned back and enjoyed the train ride a bit longer. The Ribadeo estuary, a narrow inlet that measures 10 kilometres and forms the border between Asturias and Galicia, can be crossed by car but not by train so we rode all the way around it, going south through Castropol and Vegadeo, then north again.
Ribadeo was home to the “Indianos”, people who left the area in the 19th century in search of fortune in the Americas, in particular Cuba, Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela, and who returned to Ribadeo after having been successful overseas, building majestic mansions - casas de indianos - and investing money in the community of Ribadeo by building schools, hospitals and cultural centers. Maybe because of the splendour and the variety of the city center, it felt much bigger to me than the current home of 10.000 people, or it could have been because everybody was gathered in the street I walked through: I landed in the middle of the Fiesta de San Roque, the co-patron of the town. The parade, where he was going to be carried around in his giant personification and people wear giant masks, was about to begin or had just finished.  
My sleeping place for the night was situated in the oldest and more quiet part, close to the harbour. The hostel itself breathed tranquility as well, decorated tastefully inside, while outside in the communal garden land and sea merged under a big fig tree: fossils and crystals were placed in-between the plants and from the branches of the tree, sea creatures made out of plastic waste were hanging, floating in the air. I felt immediately at home, even more when I explored the neighbourhood that had a timeless feel to it and where in a little park a small village was built that offered shelter to the stray neighbourhood cats. “There is no need to lock the door” Angel told me. “Everybody knows each other here, we’re like a big family. Nothing anybody does here goes unseen”. I know what that is like, having grown up in a village, but many times smaller than Ribadeo. Social cohesion and a mutual responsibility and care for the space you share has its benefits but it also has its downsides when you care about your privacy. I guess it is a price you have to be willing to pay and the trick is always not to be influenced too much by what your neighbours think of you.
One of the things that stood out were the signs with street-names and places of interest: white tiles with blue lettering and decoration, the names and text written in Galician or Galego, the co-official language with Spanish in Galicia and by law the first language of the local administrations and governments. During the Franco regime the written or public use of Galician was forbidden, these days the most common language for everyday use in the largest cities of Galicia is Spanish rather than Galician, however, Galician is still the main language in rural areas. The emblematic lettering on the tiles was designed by Sargadelos, the 19th century Galician porcelain maker that was revived in the mid-twentieth century with a mission to promote the motifs, forms and colours of Galician culture. My host had told me about the factory, urging me to make a little detour and visit the village where it was situated. For Sargadelos, a cultural icon, the commission came at the right moment: it wasn’t doing well financially and on top of that a new owner and company structure had led to questions about cultural legitimacy.
From the hostel it was a small walk to the harbour, through one of the narrow streets with houses painted in pale blue, light yellow, creamy white. In a red house with a white wooden door, Fernando Bellón Fernández once lived. “Aquí viviu Fernando Bellón Fernández nado 1905” a shiny metal plaque on the sidewalk said. He wasn’t a famous writer or politician or Indiano. He was just a man living in this house, a mariner who fought in the civil war. “Executado 29.12.1936 Lugo”.