The Feast of the Noble Sardine

Since the first week we met our Galician friends, we have been hearing about a mythical city in New Jersey, where you cannot swing your leg without kicking a Galician. We were drinking after the fiesta last night, when we were once more reminded that if we go up to the first person we see there and so much as mention Palmeira they'll treat us like kings.

The city? Newark.


We've encountered no anti-American sentiment at all, as far as I can tell. (Of course, I don't speak Spanish.) Enough Galicians have migrated to the United States that everyone has friends and family there, and we've met a couple of men who have returned for vacation. Palmeira--the next town over, and where we've done most of our going out--has a monument in honor of Galician emigrants. And in fact, not only first-generation emigrants but their kids can vote in Galician and even the Spanish general election.

I'm used to New York, where nearly everyone arrives from somewhere else. Here people leave, but they come back, for the summer, for vacation, or to visit. It's not much of a surprise, I suppose, but it seemed like one.

I'm rambling a bit, because it's 4 am here. We just got back from the Fiesta of San Juan, which is celebrated all over Galicia with bonfires and free sardines. At the beach we went to, the sardines were cooked three hundred at a time on long pits of embers. They were packed densely (like sardines!) on the grill whole, flipped once by hand, piled high in big platters and delivered three at a time to people waiting in line. Ana and I had seven or eight apiece: you picked the meat off the bones, let the juice drip into your bread, and toss the head (either to the gulls or to the trash, depending on your loyalties). They poured full cups of wine out of unmarked bottles, too. The white had a particularly young, tart, slightly bubbly taste, like a mean cider. (One problem here: almost all of the wine we've been drinking, outside of our wine bars, has been sold from someone's house or out the back door of a vineyard, without any indication of varietal or even where we might go to buy another bottle. So even though we were fascinated by this wine, we'll never find it again.)

One of the bonfires had been designed to look like a windmill, with white paper sides and four blades made out of wood that really turned, at least until it went up in flames. Cervantes--probably--was also a Galician. The night ended with a huge crowd of Galicians at the bar on the beach, one of whom kept deciding that I could actually speak Spanish (or Galician--Ana couldn't understand him either). All I ever made out of what he was saying was "Sancho Panza, Sancho Panza."

Between the fires and the Quixote came wine and coke and bread and sardines, but I'm not going to get it into more order than that.