EN RECORDO DE BASILIO LOSADA ( Pobra de San Xiao, Láncara, Lugo, 20 de xuño de 1930 - Barcelona, 9 de xullo de 2022)

Basilio Losada Castro, por Siro.

Terra

 Falar da Galicia rural, daquela aldea luguesa na que vivín a miña nenez, obliga a botar man das lembranzas. A Galicia rural xa non existe. Ou existe só nunha medida relativa. Galicia ten hoxe os mesmos índices de poboación rural que Alemaña, por poñer un exemplo. O mundo que aínda lembramos, coa súa carga negativa, pero tamén con valores moi positivos, desapareceu ou está a piques de facelo. E con el morre unha presencia milenaria que construiu todo o que somos. Todos os galegos procedemos daquel mundo, da aldea. Aínda hai poucos anos, ninguén podería dicir que non tiña antecendentes da aldea, nunha ou, como máximo en dúas xeracións.

A partir dos anos da década dos sesenta, aquel mundo foi implacablemente destruído. Era un mundo pobre, pero nel había elementos que conviría conservar. Recordo unha vez, cando eu era neno, que lle preguntei á miña nai: Por que fomos vivir tan lonxe, se isto é tan fermoso? E respondeu: "Pola túa diñidadade". Non dixo diñidade, que era palabra moi allea ós seus usos idiomáticos. Dixo: "Para que ti foses un home". Podería dicir tamén: "Para que tiveses esperanza". Porque aquel era un mundo sen esperanza, un ámbito que se mantiña invariable desde séculos, ou desde milenios. Nada mudaba nel. Poida que o inicio da súa transformación chegou co ferrocaril, pero o tren non chegaba a todas as partes, e as aldeas oían na noite o silbo a locomotora como algo allego, cando máis coma un portelo para fuxir.

A destrución do mundo rural acelerouse coa emigración a Europa, a partir dos anos sesenta. Xente saída da aldea pasaba, sen transición ás naves industriais de Alemaña, Suiza. Traballaban arreo para voltar, e se o conseguían, xa non era para salvar aquel mundo, senon para fuxir del: acababan mercando un piso no arrabaldo sinistro dunha cidade. Non sei se a destrución daquel mundo foi algo positivo ou negativo. Terá aspectos positivos, pero eu, agora vexo salientados os peores. En definitiva, todo é asegún. Con todo, estou seguro de que moitos dos que fuximos da nosa aldea dunha maneira ou outra, por unha ou outra razón, sentimos que alí latexaba o proxecto vago dun vivir que podería construir unha harmonía positiva do home co seu contorno físico. E moitos, xa sen esperanza, soñamos con voltar a aquel recuncho noso, xa mitificado, luídas as súas arestas ferintes.

Moitas veces teño dito, falando cos meus alumnos de Chicago, que eu nacín no século XII. Ou no XIII, que máis ten. Pensan, posiblemente, que é unha retórica didáctica para comenzar a falar dos mosteiros do Císter, pero eu sei que si, que a miña terra, a que vai de Nadela a Sarria pasado o val de Láncara, e que ten como límite, dunha banda o Miño e, do outro, a estrada de Castela, non cambiara nada prácticamente desde os tempos do románico. Para convencelos, falo do meu mundo, da casa da Penaboa, illada no meandro dun río do que non soube o nome ata hai ben pouco: é o río Sarria. Alí vivía unha gran familia, mellor dito unha familia grande: tíos casados, avós, e unha tribo de nenos. Na casa produciamos todos o que a familia precisaba, fóra do ferro, que tiñan que compralo en Sarria. Unha tía tecía a lá de ovellas da casa nun tear que hoxe sería peza dun museu antropolóxico. Cocían o centeo das searas no forno da casa, e aquelo era unha festa, a festa dos venres. Cada neno tiña dereito a un bolo coa figura do seu animal preferido. E cada cinco minutos —e non sabiamos o que eran os minutos, pois en toda a casa non había un reloxio— iamos a ver se saíra do forno o noso pan: <<Está xa meu sapiño>>; logo aquel pan sabía como nunca máis me soupo pan ningún. Na casa, nunha forxa, traballaba un meu tío, ferreiro, os coitelos, as fouces. O meu avó fixo, coas súas mans, de pau de carballo, a cama onde coñeceu á súa muller, onde naceron os seus fillos e onde el morreu. As mans, a nobreza dos home, poida que o único positivo que nos distancia dos animais, facíano todo. O meu avó era analfabeto, pero dominaba o seu mundo coa palabra e coas mans: sabía o nome de tódalas herbas, de tódolos paxaros, de todo canto vía ó seu redor, e coas mans sabía facer todo o que precisaba para vivir. Hoxe alguén diría que era analfabeto pero moi culto, porque a cultura é simplemente iso, dominar o mundo coa man e coa palabra. O outro é civilización, un barullo de trebellos prescindibles. Dominar o seu mundo, e saber, ou pensar o que sabemos, que é o que estamos facendo aquí e que vai pasar despois da morte. 

Countryside

To speak of rural Galicia nowadays, of the Lugo village where I spent my childhood, means falling back on my memories. Rura Galicia non longer exists, or only relatively. Today's Galicia has the same ratio of rural popularion as Germany, for example. The rural world we still remember, which, for all its hardships also enshrined highly positive values, has disappeared or is on the point of doing so. With it has died a millenary presence, a culture that made us all what we are. All we Galicians come from that world, of the village. Until very recently no one could say that he/she did not have village relatives in the preceding generation, or at most in the last two generations.

From the sixties onwards that world has been ruthlessly destroyed. It was a poor world, but it harboured elements that it would have been best to preserve. I remeber once asking my mother as a child, "Why have we gone to live so far away when all this is so beautiful?" She replied: "For your dignity", Almost certainly she did not use the word "dignity", so foreign to her linguistic repertoire. She would have said: "To give you hope". Because that was a world without hope, an environment that had remained unchanged for centuries or even millennia. Nothing changed. Maybe the start of its transformation came with the train but that did not reach all parts; in the villages we heard the train's whistle at night as an alien call, at best a siren escape route.

The destruction of the rural world stepped up with the emigration to Europe from the sixties onwards. Folk uprooted from their village past were plumped straight down in the factories of Germany, Switzerland... They worked hard to return and if they managed to do so their aim was no longer to save thar world but to flee it anew; they would end up buying a flat in the charmless urban sprawl of some city. I don't know whether the destruction of that world positive or not. I must have had some positive aspects but with hindsight I see most clearly the worst. It all depends on the point of view. That said, I'm sure that many of us who fled our villages in one way or another, for one reason or another, felt in our heart of hearts thar somewhere thete lurked a rough blueprint for constructing a positive harmony between man and his physical environment. Many of us came to yearn hopelessly to return to our very own nook in the world, by now romantically purged of all its roughest edges.

Speaking to my Chicago students, I've often said that I was born in the C12th, Or in the C13th, it comes to the same. They probably think that this is a mere attention-grabbing-device to usher in the subject of Cistercian monasteries, but I know it's true, that my homeland, running from Nadela to Sarria, passing through the Vale of Láncara, hemmed in on the one side by the River Miño and on the other by the Castile road, has not changed at all since Romanesque times. To convince them of this I speak of my world, of the house of Penaboa, tucked into the bend of a river whose name I didn't know until recently: River Sarria. There lived a great family, or rather a big family: married uncled, grandfathers and horde of kids. This household produced everything it needed, except iron, which we had to buy in Sarria. One of the aunts wove the wool from the household's sheep on a loom that would today be a museum piece. Friday was special: bread-baking day, using rye from the family's small holding. Each kid was entitled to a burn with the figure of his favourite animal. Every five minutes since there wasn't a clock in the whole house— we ran to see if our bread had come out of the oven. Is my toad ready yet? Then that bread tasted as no other. In the house, in the forge, the blacksmith uncle knives and sickles. With his own hands grandfhater had made the oaken bed where he lay with is wife, where his children were born and where he himself died. The hands, man's nobility, maybe the only thing thar marks us off from the animals, did everything that needed to be done. Grandfhater was illiterate bute dominate the world with the word and his hands: he knew the name of all the herbs, of all the birds, of everything he saw about him, and with his hands he made all his daily wherewithal. Today we could say that he was illiterate but highly learned, because culture is simply that: the power to dominate the world with the word and the hand. The rest is civilisation, a hotchpotch of dispensable artefacts. It was given us to dominate our own world and know, or believe we knew, what we were doing here and what happened after death.

Basilio Losada
do libro: Galicia nai e señora
Nigratrea, 2002

Fotografías de © Roque Soto Soto