Rainy Vigo

Now the rain starts. A Choiva. This is the Gallego I learn from highway warning signs. To make sure we were really & truly convinced that our month of freakishly good weather was over, it rained for about 12 hours on Sunday and all day on Tuesday. There was flooding in the city! Above you see the view to the left of my little balcony (no view of the water. sad!!).

And the view to the right.

This is taken from a totally different spot, namely, Domaio, way up the hill, where my tutoring students live.

This is the view of the waterfall you have from their back yard / garden. As you can see, a house is being built and is going to totally ruin their view. The thing that passes in front of the waterfall is one of the viaducts of the Corredor do Morrazo highway. O Morrazo is the name of the peninsula so the highway's name is just Morrazo corridor. Anyway, it's quite a dangerous highway; I learned this week that in the last year 8 people died in crashes up there. Riding on it, you can understand why it's dangerous. For much of it, there isn't any kind of shoulder. Either you're on a viaduct (there are several, and as you can see, they're long) or you're in a stretch of the highway that is blasted out of the mountain, meaning that there are sheer rocky walls on either side. All this means that some people just prefer to drive along the road on the coast that goes through Domaio town, through Moaña, past Tirán and all the way to Cangas; but although the coastal road is less intense and less fast, it's extremely curvy: two days ago I saw the aftermath of a quite serious head-on collision, the crumpled fronts of two cars sitting cross-wise, splintered and out-of-commission, airbags flopped out like shopping bags and broken glass like grit all over the asphalt.

Another view from up in Domaio. Lush. those are grapevines. Ría de Vigo with the bayetas in the middle ground.

Ominous view from the Puente de Rande.

Claroscuro

Language issues

As an American living in Europe you realize that your perspective on languages is all wrong. After all, we're from a country with 300 million people who speak the exact same language, not to mention Canada. Our regional variations don't even really rise to the level of dialects (though of course that's not a very exact term).

In many European countries, on the other hand, regional variations in language are dramatic. The languages we know as French or Italian are literary standards based on one important dialect and then generalized to the rest of the country (what we call French comes from Northern France, the langes d'oil, standardized on the dialect of the Île de France, I think; the Italian language is based on the language of Florence) . Italy of course has only been a state since the 1860s. France has a longer history of being a nation-state, and also has a very long history of intense and unempathetic centralization, under the Bourbons, the revolutionaries, etc. Even so, most people living in the State "France" didn't speak "French" for a long time, through the 19th century, even into the 20th century. There's an interesting book by Eugen Weber called "Peasants into Frenchmen" that's about the process of official cultural/linguistic/administrative unification (or internal imperialism, if you want to look at it that way), and he argues that the people of the country "France" didn't really become "French" as we understand it today until the period between 1870 and 1930, which is really very late.

Your daily history lesson

So where does Spain fit into this rat's nest of history and regional peculiarity (kidding, love ya Europe)? Well, Spain is funny. In the year 711, the Moors invaded Spain and quickly took over most of the peninsula. But when the Moors got way up to the north coast of Spain, they looked at the mountains and thought to themselves, "Wow, rugged mountains filled with all the crazy hold-outs and desperadoes left over from our brilliant conquest. Should we even bother?... nah..." and they didn't really take control of the region. The Christians also triumphed in a battle at Covadonga, which, depending who you ask, might just be famous for its symbolic value (i.e. it was the first Christian victory after 711). The result of all this is... chan chan-chan... the núcleos de resistencia, or "nuclei of resistance," to awkwardly translate the habitual Spanish term. So you can image that there are various little Christian kingdoms up in the northern mountains, kind of isolated. During the next 800 years or so, these "nuclei" turn into the various kingdoms of Spain (like Castile, Leon, Asturias, Galicia) and expand towards the south at the expense of the Muslim states there. So they are shaped kind of like stripes from North to South. And given the fact that all these kingdoms originate in isolated little "nuclei," they all have a different way of talking, or their own language. So the stripe along the Atlantic coast speaks Galician-Portuguese. The stripe along the Mediterranean coast speaks Catalan, which is a language closely related to the languages of Southern France. And in the middle of the country you have the Asturian-Leonese stripe and the Castilian stripe and the Aragonese stripe and so on. (Let's take a moment to remember the Basques who live in the corner of Spain and France and have an ancient language that has no known linguistic relatives.*) Then you have to take into account the effects of history. The kingdom of Castile becomes increasingly important and powerful, and begins to be politically linked up with the other kingdoms of Iberia, forming a shape that is more or less like what we think of as "Spain" today. Because of this, the Castilian language becomes more important, becomes official, and crowds out other languages. Castilian is what we customarily refer to as "Spanish." And for my purposes I should also point out that Galician-Portuguese splits into two languages, Galician and Portuguese.

So a lot of the non-official languages of Spain get relegated to 2nd-rung status. Sure, if you go to the countryside, you can find people who speak them, but they're not used in government or in church administration or literature, etc.

They have their advocates, though, and sometimes go through periods of revitalization. People write literature in Galician and Catalan, work out official spelling standards, and so on.

Now let's jump to the 20th century:

Franco's régime pursues a harsh Castilian-only policy and represses Catalan, Basque, Galician, etc. Historically, I think this is a kind of funny choice. I say this because the more traditional pattern of the Spanish state is to be regionalistic and not centralistic. Centralization and uniformity are more modern ideals and often associated with liberal/Enlightenment régimes. Anyway, after the fall of the Franco régime, Spain's new constitution enshrines a devolved and heavily regionalistic system of government and also supports the regional languages.

Today

So Spain today has four official languages. One is Castilian which is official the whole country over. Then there's Catalan, which is official in Catalonia, the Valencian community, and the Balearic islands (in Valencia they call it Valenciano and in the islands they call it Mallorquín, but it's all the same language really). The language of Galicia is Galician. And the language of the Basques is of course Basque. It works out pretty well, though you might wonder why the Asturians and Leonese don't have official status for their language. Well, good question. Once you start this kind of particularism, you kind of wonder where to stop. That's the inherent problem.

Galician

I live in Galicia, one of the regions with its own language. Before I left, I was a bit preoccupied by the language issues and worried they would present a major inconvenience. It hasn't really been that way. For one thing, I live in Vigo, the biggest city in Galicia. Along with another big city in the north, Corunna,** it is predominantly Castilian-speaking. So "at home," I rarely have to deal with Galician. I think if I worked in Vigo I would pretty much never run across it. Some people in Vigo are positively dismissive of the language. One lady, when I mentioned I worked with Galician speakers, joked, "¡Qué horror!"

I work in a plurilingual school out in a town. At school, the teachers are all Galician-speakers. And a large portion of classes are given in Galician too. Of course the teachers speak Castilian too, they're perfectly bilingual, but Galician is more natural to them. This is especially true of a few. Minus the gym teacher, she's from Zamora province (Castile & Leon) and doesn't really speak Galician. Whenever they talk with me they speak Castilian so it's no problem, but it does mean I hear a lot of Galician, in the staff room and in class.

I'm more undecided when it comes to the kids. I hear them speaking lots of Castilian. Sometimes the teacher will be speaking to them in Galician and they'll be responding in Castilian. Basically they're bilingual.

I can catch quite a lot of it; as you might guess, it's not wildly different from Spanish.

I hope you enjoyed this overlong explanation of Galician language issues, congratulations if you made it all the way to the bottom. And since throughout I've been dodging the Castilian/Galician issue by relying on English-language terms, here's a little chart of proper names.

English	Castilian	Galician
Galicia	Galicia	Galicia / Galiza
Galician	Gallego	Galego
Castilian / Spanish	Castellano	Castelán

*Pretty much every crackpot linguist makes it his pet project to prove the link between Basque and Ancient Egyptian or Finnish or Japanese or the languages of the Caucasus or whatever.

**It's called La Coruña in Castilian or A Coruña in Galician, so I've avoided either by using the old-fashioned Engish exonym Corunna; I just like exonyms anyway.

Narrative Cohesion

Today with the 1st grade, the teacher handed everyone pictures (that they'd previously colored) and wanted them to tell a story about them. So the first person said something about his picture, and the second person was supposed to continue the story with something about his picture. It sounds good except that the pictures have no relation to each other, other than being Halloween-themed, not to mention the fact that all of the children are six years old.

Kid 1 (has picture of devil): Once upon a time there was a devil.
Teacher: Good! OK... next--
Kid 2 (has picture of chimney): And the devil went to a house and went down the chimney and was in a fire...
Kid 3 (picture of Zombie): AND THERE WAS A ZOMBIE!!! (note: in Castilian, Zombie is pronounced THOMBI) AND HE MET THE DEVIL! And then they went next door, to a house, and there was a girl, and her father, and then the father had a knife and he got out the knife and...
Teacher: OK! OK! Next person!
Kid 4 (picture of a Witch): And then a witch came along and said "HEE HEE HEE!! Drink this potion! It will make you very strong!" And the zombie and the devil drank the potion...
Kid 5 (picture of Vampire): Then a Vampire came along and BIT the Witch....
Kid 6 (picture of House): Then they went to the Witch's house.
Teacher: After he bit her, they went to her house?
Kid 6: Well he took her to his house.
(OK...?)
Kid 7 (picture of ghost): And then a ghost came and there was another vampire and the vampire bit it
Kid 8 (picture of a door): Then there was a knock at the door. KNOCK! KNOCK! It was another Vampire. He pushed at the door... EEEEE...
Kid 9 (picture of candy): And another vampire came in and they decided to eat this candy, but when they did, fists came out and punched them. Pow! Pow!
Kid 10: (incoherent rambling about another witch and another vampire)
Kid 11 (picture of a scary tree with a face): Then they went out to the garden. And there was this tree with four arms. And he caught the four vampires, two witches, the zombie, the ghost, the devil, the girl and her father, and ate them all.

Conversation about America

Tutoring Student-- Did you read the news today?
Me-- No, what did you see?
TS-- In the United States there was a pree-vat zoo.
--A what?
--A private zoo.
--Oh..? OK? And what about the private zoo?
--Well, there were lions and tigers and chameleons and everything.
--OK? So a rich person had a private zoo..?
--Right, and this woman went to... how do you say carcel?
--Jail. She went to jail.
--OK, so when she went to jail, her husband, he, disparar...
--He shot himself?! Wait, what? Are we still talking about the private zoo?
--And he opened the doors and all the animals escape. Lions, Tigers, Chameleons... How do you say parece?
--"seems."
--The United States seems like a film!

YEP, JUST ANOTHER DAY IN THE UNITED STATES.

Santiago de Compostela

Santiago is really beautiful. The Cathedral is basically irresistible. Every time I saw it I felt like getting out my camera. It's visible from all over the city and every time you see its spires you feel like there should be some angelic choirs singing in the background.

Santiago es muy bella. La Catedral es casi irresistible. Cada vez que la vi, tenía ganas de sacar mi cámara. Es visible de muchas partes de la ciudad y cada vez que ves sus agujas piensas que debería haber unos coros angélicos cantando para música de fondo.

This I think is the best vantage point for photos of the Cathedral... anyway, I like the picture above, with the evening light on the big tree, the figures, the church in the background, the sense of scale...

Yo creo que esto es el mejor punto de vista para sacar fotos de la Catedral... de todas formas, me gusta la foto de arriba, con la luz de la tarde sobre el gran árbol, las figuras, la iglesia al fondo, el sentido de escala...

Evening, and daylight
Tarde, y pleno día

MMM! Full octopi in the restaurant windows.
¡Pulpos enteros en los escaparates!

An odd hagiographical bust of Valle-Inclán
Un curioso busto hagiográfico de Valle-Inclán

Triple helix spiral staircase inside the Museo do Pobo Galego!
¡Una escalera en forma de una triple hélice dentro del Museo do Pobo Galego!

Inside one church there was a kind of "Pantheon of great Galicians" (but it was weirdly small and didn't have many monuments, which seems to give the opposite impression from the one you assume they were aiming for). Anyway, one side had a large monument to Rosalía de Castro (actually I've realized that this is her tomb, not a monument), the famous 19th century Galician-language poet. People had left notes, lines from her poetry, homages, etc.

Dentro de cierta iglesia hubo un tipo de "Panteón de gran Gallegos" (no me acuerdo de exactamente como se llamaba ni en castellano ni en gallego; además, era curiosamente pequeño y no tenía muchos monumentos, que parece dar la impresión contraria a la que se supone que querían dar. (Uy, que construcción tan larga. Espero que tiene sentido en castellano)). De todos modos, en un lado hubo un monumento grande, en realidad la tumba de la famosa poeta gallegoparlante Rosalía de Castro. Se le había dejado notas, líneas de su poesía, homenajes, etc.

random Art Nouveau

Steep Vigo

Views from Moaña

This is the early morning view from Tirán over to Vigo, i.e. the only good part of getting up at 6:30.

It's less beautiful, but this is the midday view from the center of Moaña across to Vigo.