Pulpo Paradise

Moita xente que fai o Camiño de Santiago quédase co detalle da Pulpería de Ezequiel en Melide, como ben recollen moitas guías do Camiño, pero eu flipo habitualmente coa cantidade de páxinas web que fan referenza día a día ó Cerne de Galicia.
Así, resulta habitual ver fotografías tomadas polos peregrinos ou curiosas alusións ó “octopus tu de party“, pero cando se trata de anglofalantes que decoñecen o sabor do polbo e rematan describíndoo coma delicioso (cando a meirande parte dos estranxeiros tenden a pensar que o polbo é unha criatura noxenta) dá que pensar. ¿Será que os peregrinos son turistas con mentres máis abertas que o resto?
Eu, pola miña banda, non podo evitar a tentación de replicar aquí o texto do blog dunha tal wandererwoman que define a Melide coma o Pulpo Paradise:

I wake late again and see that Mr Delight as I have named the didgeredoo playing basque has gone. Everyone else however sleeps on. I think it is because we are nearing the end of the journey and it has been long, I also feel increasingly emotional and this is tiring. Too tiring to analyse. We have a hearty breakfast because today the road  will be longer than the last few days ..19 k`s. We are aiming for Melide …an inland town famed for is pulperias ..or cafes with big copper pots of boiled octopus which is served on wooden plates with olive oil, red pepper and marine salt. It is a steady walk through an increasing number of small villages and it is like much of my experience of the landscape in Gallicia , very lovely. Hills and dales are covered in great swathes of yellow broom and purple heath and a deeper purple red flower which accents the others. There is also a light mauve delicate plant that occasionally surprises the eye. Coming in through the industrial estate is beautiful because of these plants and the accompanying birds. Melide too, accessed across a four arch medieval bridge has a cobbled charm. 

The Albergue is like many, situated on the other side of town requiring a long walk through pretty high walled streets.  It is hard to find but nicer than the previous night and we settle in to a corridor room of eight. It fills with truculent french men. I notice that many people at this stage of the walk seem angry and preoccupied. Perhaps they are like that always or because they are just doing the last 100 k`s of the walk as many are, they have not yet had time for the power of the walk to make any impression on them. I find them arrogant and unpleasant.     

We go to the most famous of the pulperias and there are long tables of feasting Spanish families and old woman stirring these great copper pots of octopus. It is Sunday so the Spanish are dressed in their best after church and the place is extremely busy. The flat dishes of sizzling paprika covered octopus are served in oil lwith bread and red wine and the taste is sensational. I know I will forever be a pulpo devotee and feel a warm contentment this Sunday afternoon in the north of Spain.

Ami and I catch the eye of a Galleigo carpenter ( as it transpires). He is eating with his wife and daughter and ami begins a conversation with him and then we join the family. He gets very drunk, his wife is very patient and his intentions / attentions become very dishonourable. It is damn hard not knowing the language and ami also had difficulties as they spoke galleago only. Eventually I have to leave as the gestures have become universal and I am  very over the whole escapade…we have retired to another bar in the town. On the walk back to the Albergue I go  into two small stone churches in the heart of the town and there,  read that they were churches of the inquisition. They are  bleak spaces without the usual opulent unruliness of  the churches central to every village and I feel the ghostly swish of thin men in black clothes hastening forward to denounce someone. The buildings are also unnaturally cold and chastening in their implications.   

A anécdota da polbeiría me resulta especialmente curiosa, pois parece que souberon retratar correctamenta o espírito do local 😛

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