It’s Saturday at noon and the municipality of Barbadás, Ourense, has woken up to a spectacular autumn day. The sun is shining, it’s barely cold and the embers are starting to release that smoke that announces that something is being celebrated here today. Music accompanies the neighbors who arrive at the Filomena Dato school, located near the river. Numerous long tables are arranged in what is usually used as a playground and which today becomes the epicenter of a popular festival: Magosto. Around San Martiño, which falls on November 11, Galicia – especially the provinces of Ourense and Lugo, but also some areas of León, such as El Bierzo – is filled with these festivals in which chestnuts roasted over the fire are the protagonists. Early May starts in late October and usually lasts until mid-November.
In Barbadas, the Moureán Cultural Association is in charge of organizing the event. About twenty young people divide the tasks with admirable efficiency: some light the fire, others take care of the bar or sell tickets at the entrance, and the others take care of distributing food and drinks among those present. Days ago everyone collaborated by collecting chestnuts in the surrounding area so that today no one would be left short. And although this fruit is the center of the celebration, the May menu usually includes empanada, churrasco, chorizos, bica, café de pota and, when night falls, quellemada. Depending on the location you can also find tripe, ears of corn or sardines.
The chestnuts arrive at the end of the meal; In some places, such as Barbadás, they use the same grill as the churrasco to roast them, to which they add the classic chestnut with holes in the base to cook them directly on the fire. In other municipalities, the drum is used, a perforated iron cylinder that is placed over the fire. For uniform cooking of the chestnuts it is necessary to rotate the drum using the side handle.
“Historically, the chestnut has been a fundamental product in Galician gastronomy. Over time it was relegated to the potato, and it was important that the potato itself was called ‘castaña de terra’,” explains Borxa González Castro, of Orgullo Galego, a digital community dedicated to the diffusion of Galician culture and language on social networks. “In autumn we begin to harvest and also taste the new wine, all in a context in which we enter the dark and cold period of the year in which the field stops being productive, so the chestnut is the last product to be harvested in the agricultural calendar.”
Galicia ranks first in the national production of this fruit; More than half of all the country’s chestnuts come from this community, which also boasts a Protected Geographical Indication. The celebration of this festival therefore has agricultural roots and would be a form of gratitude for the harvest harvested. This is attested by songs such as the one that Silverio Cañada cites in the Great Galician Encyclopedia when he talks about the month of August: “Acabáronse as Vendimias / veñen as esfolladas / para comer coas mozas / four roasted chestnuts” (The harvest is over / the peeling (generally of corn) is arriving / to eat with the girls / four roasted chestnuts).
But the symbolism of this holiday goes far beyond that. The historian Manuel Murguía, quoted in the aforementioned encyclopedia, focused on August which was celebrated on the eve of the commemoration of the deceased, considered “a funeral banquet in which chestnuts and wine could symbolize death and life”. From Orgullo Galego they add: “It is said that the places where the magostos are celebrated tend to be spaces of connection with the afterlife, which opens in this period.” Because although it is now common to see magostos in squares, cultural centers, warehouses or schools, traditionally they were made in mountain clearings, in soutos (chestnut groves) or at road intersections. Even today, many are made in the mountains, with the inhabitants of the village or neighborhood, and also in homes, generally in the kitchen (and before that around the lareira, the space in the house used to light the fire).
Free magostos, where free food and drinks are offered, coexist with those that require advance payment of the ticket, which usually costs between 10 and 20 euros. Music is another essential element: while some municipalities rely on bagpipes and tambourines, others rely on local orchestras or brass bands. Wine, brandy, coffee liqueur and quellemada water down the party and help to accompany chestnuts, meat and desserts. “Today, magicians have lost much of that funerary meaning in favor of a playful-festive activity, but they are more alive than ever and have gone from almost disappearing to experiencing a process of revitalization,” says Borxa González Castro.
In addition to eating, drinking, singing and dancing, there are many rituals around May, from jumping over the fire to purify oneself to smearing one’s face with ash from the bonfire. “Various anthropologists indicate that this was done, on the one hand, to scare people, simulating the Fellowship or souls, and on the other, as a way to disguise themselves,” says Borxa. Even the chestnuts themselves, he points out, have their own meaning within this ritual for the dead: “They say that for each one you eat, you free a soul from purgatory, just like every chestnut that explodes when cooked.” Those explosions are part of the fun of the party, although if you want to minimize them just make a small cut in the chestnut before throwing it into the fire.
Food in celebrations of the dead in Galicia
For some time now we have known the custom of going out to ask for candy on Halloween or funeral banquets on the Day of the Dead in Mexico, but as they have recalled in recent days on Orgullo Galego’s social networks, even in Galicia food has a central role in the celebrations of the deceased. “Funeral banquets were documented here since the 6th century, a rite by which food was brought to the burial place and the deceased was honored communally, perhaps the rite preceding the one that has survived almost to the present day, the wake in homes, where the dead were in a room and in the kitchen they ate and told stories about the deceased,” says Borxa. Furthermore, he underlines, we cannot forget the bread of souls, which was offered to those present at the funeral wake and to the poorest people, or was sold to obtain money with which to pay for the masses for the souls in purgatory.
Another tradition of this time of year, always linked to chestnuts, is that of zonchos necklaces, which are made with these fruits cooked in water, salt and fennel, catnip or anise. When they cool, they are strung on a thread with the help of a needle, forming long necklaces that can be eaten. “Tradition says that they were worn especially by the littlest ones in the house to protect them, there were ‘fights’ over eating other people’s necklaces and keeping their own”, explains Borxa, who assures that this is one of the traditions for the deceased that is being recovered most successfully, as more and more families, schools and associations promote it, in addition to “social networks, an example that its use with cultural and informative interest can play a very positive role”.
From Orgullo Galego they insist on the importance of keeping this type of celebrations and rituals alive. Knowing them is, in fact, the first step to start valuing them and not “abandon yourself to a consumerist party imported from the United States”. Borxa recalls that in Galicia pumpkins, turnips and potatoes were already being emptied, which adds to the list of myths and legends that exist around the dead: the petos de ánimas (small shrines dedicated to the dead), the cruzeiros or the Compaña which, at this time, is said to begin traveling along the roads. “We have enormous wealth, but the children know who the clown is.” Item and not the Company.”
However, this digital community dedicated to dissemination does not want to be negative, as it states that there is currently one in Galicia boom of recovering traditions, both in Difuntos and at Christmas, Entroido (carnival), Maios or San Xoán. “In a conversation I had with the anthropologist Rafael Quintía, precisely about the traditions of Difuntos, he said that celebrating Halloween in Galicia by having the original traditions here was as if, being able to eat crabs and crabs from the estuary, we preferred the crabs from the Mississippi. I think the gastronomic example perfectly summarizes the process we live.” They are committed to continuing to disseminate information, speak to the elderly and protect the cultural treasures of each area. Only in this way can we maintain the cultural diversity that enriches us all.
In this link you can consult all themagicals that will be held in the next few days.
