NÉLIDA PIÑON, ONE YEAR AFTER SAYING GOODBYE TO GALICIA

September 30, 2023

Dear Nélida:

It has been a year of eternity since your last physical visit to Galicia. Here survives your ancient, eternal, mythical memory, and your present, your work, your magic – the one that made that white horse appear, possibly Santiago’s, on the bridge of Borela, in Cotobade, one afternoon of friendship and orballo, a prodigy that also caused, moments later, the beautiful animal to vanish into the forest, in the mist, with the same wonder of the once upon a time in which, as in a story, we were made characters. Destiny spell.

We have not yet been able to complete your legacy, the homage to the origins of your beloved ancestors. We could not deliver or edit that collection of articles that concern the germinal land, the land of the origin of almost everything – as Karla Vasconcelos da Silva knows well -, including nostalgia, also the homesickness embedded in the soul of a girl who returned, and did it again and again as in a desired merry-go-round, to stay there looking at the mountains, talking to the cows, walking the Obradoiro, caressing the flowered stones that grew in a cathedral, in which the hopes of the gullible still sway, like a botafumeiro, and in which the embrace of the Apostle friend consoles the agnostics, the beggars, the rich, all alike. Stones that bore witness to the solidarity of religious orders, the patronage of kings, the inspiration of bards; stones that provided the support for an inexhaustible flow of cultures and crossbreeding, which astonish the world and invite it to walk in equality and peace in the direction of the setting sun, as if following the path of your admired Ulysses.

Like Penelope, you have woven and unwoven fidelity in your work and in your relationships, you have spun the love, not of a wife, but of a granddaughter, of a daughter, of a friend, of a committed, cultured, attentive woman, the same one who taught me that the other exists, who instilled in me the philosophy of otherness. This is the blue and white thread that unites us Galicians.

I hope to soon embrace Karla Vasconcelos, legatee of an immeasurable heritage. I will do so, first of all, to endorse the brotherhood you have given us. I hope to find it under the camellias that you and Carmensa de la Hoz planted there in the estates of your beloved Piñeiro -Pedro, Beatriz, Maruchy, etc.-, in the Forest of Words, in Quinteiro da Cruz, in Ribadumia. We should also celebrate the joy of the eternal bond with Luis G. Tosar, with Ramón Villares, with Darío Villanueva, with Bieito Rubido, with Alfredo Conde, and with so many other good friends.

But the main objective must be to exercise your mandate, that endowment of words of Galicia, by and for her, a tribute to the men, the feeling, the emigration, the literature, the landscape, the Galician knowledge. This priceless testimony of a unique lineage, that of the emigrants, the farmers, the sailors, the poets, the figueroists? We must achieve this before memories forget what we were, what we are, what we as a tribe, as a people, as a culture, are obliged to remember to new generations, as a civilization assembled by universal feelings, forged in conscious links of deep Atlantic roots, those that unite America and Iberia under the ocean and on land.

You said you aspire to “be the voice of various cultures and different influences, because they all form a polyphony that represents and shapes the human race. As the daughter and granddaughter of Galicians and at the same time Brazilian, of Galician origin but also with a Latin American vision, I believe that the same continent where I was born is a good synthesis of the human adventure and that this same tradition and sum of cultures comes to the surface in my work.” You were indeed that polyphony, and in your singing you have incorporated your love for Portugal and Europe, your closeness to African and Arab culture, your knowledge of Asia and Oceania, your curiosity for all knowledge and your love for living beings, rational or not.

With the simplicity of the humble, in your cosmopolitanism, you even confessed that you were moved by the sight of “the cows, the greenery, the landscape, the discreet noises, the wind, the northern air”. All that makes up, you added, “a permanent memory in my life. The feeling of loneliness. The meals and the people, how they shouted at me, how they embraced me when I arrived in Galicia for the first time. I have extraordinary memories of that land. For me, everything reminds me of Galician culture: any small detail, a potato, for example, or a reddish pig of three hundred kilos touches me deeply. As if I were Demeter, the Greek mother of the earth, and that through her goddess powers I could reach the heart of Galicia.” You have arrived and stayed in this old and beautiful Finisterre, being already part of the divinity you remain in the souls of those of us who loved and admired you.

My regards to your grandfather Daniel, your parents and your friend Pucho, my father. Also to Carmen Balcells and Luis.

The day will come when Galicia will do you justice, with more than just honors, as its prodigal daughter, born in emigration, will do by recognizing you as a universal being, who is capable of achieving the most sublime work and of giving us a Republic of dreams in which you already reside forever.

With all my affection and love, I want to thank you now for coming to say goodbye to Galicia and to me.

A kiss to heaven.

Alberto Barciela, a Spanish journalist, is vice president of EditoRed.

This text is free to use. If you plan to use it, please cite EditoRed as the source.