Further Gallego investigations:

To pursue my immersion of the Galician culture I have recently joined a traditional Galician dance class at the local community centre and taken a basket making workshop. Since the dance class started in September I have to really concentrate in the class for both the dance steps and the language, but at least the class is given in Spanish and not Gallego.

I was told recently that children don´t like learning Gallego in school and so I have asked a few people about that. It seems to be a bit of a political topic and has made for some interesting English class discussions. The Galician language highlights the divisions within the region of Galicia, as different variations are spoken in the different provinces, and it also highlights a bit of an urban and rural divide as Gallego is spoken more often in the country than in the city. To give you a bit of background, during the Franco regime the language was banned and since then it had been given a grammar and has been brought into the school system. In some schools all lessons are given in Gallego and in others it is a weekly language class. Here in Lugo many people speak Gallego at home, at work and all municipal documents are printed only in the Galician language. I am told the language is similar to the Portuguese spoken in northern Portugal and I am slowly getting better at understanding it. Some of the reasons children don´t like learning Gallego in school are because it is different than the Gallego they speak at home, it is similar and easy to confuse with Spanish and because the grammar rules are continuously being updated and modified. I am quite impressed at the amount of people that speak the language considering it was really not that long ago it was banned. I am told that this is because Lugo is one of the more traditional parts of Galicia. The region is made up of four provinces: A Coruña to the northwest, Lugo in the northeast, Ourense in the southeast and Pontevedra in the southwest. In my discussions I have learned that people from Pontevedra are often referred to as Portuguese, from Lugo as Lugoslavos and from Coruña as Turkish. I have not yet found out the reason for the last. Most people here consider the Corunian citizens as stuck-up and that they have invented their own language mixing both Gallego and Spanish, and that they generally prefer to speak Spanish. With all this there continues to be a Galician separatism movement with a white flag with a blue diagonal stripe and a red star, and apparently an anthem as well.

In high school we used to joke about studying basket making, but now having worked quite hard to make two baskets it´s not so funny any more. I didn´t realize it was so hard and that it would take me over nine hours to make my first basket. A couple weekends ago I walked out to a workshop to learn how to make traditional baskets. There was a very nice, patient man who helped a group of about ten of us weave and shape ´Bimbeo´ in Gallego, or wicker in English into baskets. I found the first day very long, but the second day was quite satisfying to see my baskets finally assembled after all of the work. I felt like little Red Riding hood when I left carrying my basket, walking through the trees, along the river back into Lugo.

My most recent trip was last Saturday to A Coruña for the day with a couple of British students from my Spanish class at the university. I felt like a country girl in the big city and it was a little strange to speak English all day. We visited a fort, the tower and the body museum. One of the unusual things about the city was the pirate theme. I am not sure why skulls and cross-bones were displayed in various parts of the city, maybe it´s part of the Turkish mystery...