Esgos or the child Manuel

Taking hold the lost hours I run towards the car. In spite of being a warm day, crosses my skin an amount of shivers that make me dress jacket. I touch the "on" to the Mr. Antón asking him the way to Esgos (my destination is Reguerio, but Mr. Antón does not know where I is) and I finish the route, like years ago did the one Who I am looking for.
The road looks new, it is possible that it is the same that Romasanta used, but the caps of tar were changed through the passing years, obtaining a road of three or four rails in some sections. The populations who border on the distance are relatively new judging by the constructions, it sees that here it happens like in the USA, and the people are located next to the road links.
There is an important dispersion and the houses are mixed with the pastures and the walnuts.
When I park in Esgos' center, there is a tranquility proper of a postpandemic quarantine. It is a small village crossed by the road where I was coming, that splits in two the small population. In the bar “O lugar” (The Place) there are four teenagers forgeting the hours entertained with a board game. I ask for Regueiro, and a young woman, Lucía, offers herself to accompany me, this way she is that she gets into the car and directs me.


When I tell her that I am going to visit the church of Holy Eulalia de Esgos, make me change direction, because of I realized that it used to be closed, but She knows who has the keys. The "night watchwoman" is Ms. Carme, which does the functions of maintenance and cleanliness of the church. She is a widow, old but always ready to help, lives in A Lama (a kind of neighborhood of Esgos a bit far from the city center) with the house full of religious imagery with these typical images of a religion quasi polytheistic
While I think about the simplicity of getting there, and in the predisposition to help that they have the Esgos habitants, Lucía looks for me, probably she is thinking what strange it turns out to be the situation. She tells me that when she was small they threatened her with the “Home do Unto” (Man of the Grease) when she was behaving badly... Ms. Carme says to me that she cannot open the church` door to strangers, that I have to speak with D. Teófilo because of he is the titular parson of Esgos, and give me a handwriting paper on which the telephone number of the parson is written, I had time me to thinking about a possible negative response of Teófilo when already was saying one to me yes with a tired voice, sign of the passed years. Seconds later I was on the way accompanied by two women. It does not seem that the histories of the Sacauntos that they listenes during their childness deeped so much judging by the confidence that they award a complete stranger.


The church of Santa Eulalia de Esgos is a church as many others, with the particularity that here there was baptized the child Manuel Blanco Romasanta.
I photograph what I want under to attentive look of the neighbors of Esgos, who measure every step that I give, they speak between them, and they stare at me when I speak for the mobile in English. Ms. Carme invites me to visit all the stays of the church, even the ones which can not be visited. Ms. Carme enumerates the reforms that the temple suffered since she has use of reason and assures that the pile of baptism, though it changed of place continues being to same of always, though I say to her that It resembles quite young.


Once finished the work, I deposit again the women where I gathered them respectively. On the way back to the temple to photograph it externally I see Esgos's cemetery. I could not suppress desire of entering. It is amazing to see how there are many of graveyards property of Romasantas and of Blancos.
I walk around the church. How many times Manuel Blanco's feet would tread on this leafy area? In the porch of the church there is also a small cemetery that perhaps is a custom of hereabouts, in it also abounds the surname of the Sacamanteigas.


Again I sit down in the car, you cannot imagine the narrow one of these ways. They are so narrow that one of the wheel mark is marked out, in the grass of the road. Anyway I have to go ahead because of that I cannot come back.

Sometimes the casualities seem to be written in the book that we bring on when we born. Before I managed to get back I find, just in front of me a road sign on which is written "Soutelo". This locality is where the young man Romasanta found a woman with who married in the church that I visited previously. The few neighbors of the village do not know anything of the real history, only parts from the legend, probably by the shame that provokes that the killer had been marry there, because of this it was erased of the collective memory. In exchange for doing a question to him (her) I have to answer some fence of my origin and what was bringing me up to Soutelo.


Regueiro is quite close to Soutelo, for the same road where the church is.
Regueiro sow how Romasanta grew. It is a small village, habitated only for two persons. Distrust contrasts with the attitude of the Esgos and A Lama. You know little of the history of Romasanta if not for what he said when was small "The man of the grease will come and take you" and what they see on the national television channel.
Regueiro has three streets: a circular one and other two that divide this circle in three. Most of the houses are in very bad conditions because of the passage of time. Here they have many months of cold and dampness as that the constructions have galleries and corridors cross from one side of the street to the other doing of Regueiro a complicated labyrinth.
For the streets does not pass a car, since they are designed only for the cattle. The houses have just one floor, where in the low one they were sheltering the cattle, and above they were doing life the families. I try myself to imagine the hard Romasanta's childhood, the received education, and the relations with the neighbors that for sure marked him to end Up in the psychological disorder that he suffered years later.
Once back I stop to make a photo of a scarecrow, and I see a man who is sowing corn. Here they only use the corn for feed pigs; Eat it roasts like is done in America looks like to them a heresy.
The farmer is called Pepe Romasanta, and at the question of if he knows history of the Sacaúntos anwers that “is part of the family ", but it is an answer that he never investigated. He can not demonstrate the family precedents. Pepe Romasanta has approximately 60 years, and confesses semiilliterate.
He tells the legends that he could have listened during his life, and maybe he could remember for being an imagined relative and, is because of it for what he speaks about him with certain fondness:

"The Sacauntos, or Sacamanteigas, calls him as you like, was more clever than a
garlic (Galician saying, which means to be very clever).At that time he could read and write. He was as shrewd as a fox, smaller than this hoe, but quite strong . He had face of wolf, he was shaggy and ugly so much that I had not wanted to see him in a dark night [...] It is said that wondered trough the moutain, Caves, there together with San Pedro, was living in the caves with the mouros , in the times of the war, but he was not going with these people. He was pleasing with new young women, but he was very shy..."

“O Sacauntos, ou Sacamanteigas, chámalle como queiras, era un home máis listo ca un allo. Seica xa daquela sabía ler e escribir. Era astuto coma unha zorra, pequenote que non avultaba máis ca este sacho, pero ben forte. Tiña cara de lobo, era peludo e feo que non quixera eu velo na noite pecha [...] Din que andou fuxido polo monte, nas Covas, aí a carón de San Pedro, estibo vivindo nas covas cos mouros, nos tempos da guerra, pero el non se levaba con esa xente. Gostaba das mozas novas, máis era moi apoucadiño...”

In his story is not easy to separated reality from fiction. He gives erroneous information. He names the civil war that suffered this country in 1939, mentioning those who were escaping of the Franco`s regime, assuring that they lived with Romasanta. It could have been a nice history, but the times of the war are far (hundred years) to the time when the Sacamanteigas scaped from the justice.
I say goodbye, the Sun is bordering already the horizon and s I must go to San Pedro de Rocas (Saint's Peter of Rocks) monastery, also in Esgos's municipality.
Manuel Blanco Romasanta knew well this monastery. Here he spent long time, scaped of the law or because of the special friendship that had with the assistant of the abbot of this church.
San Pedro of Rocks resembles to be climbing up a solitary mount in a perfect balance that gives the geometric pieces of stone and the rounded carvings in the rock in equal parts that shape its architecture.

The anthropomorphic sarchofag carved in the rock (probably for this motive still existing today). The temple is abandonned, opened to any visitor. Undoubtedly has many for its singular beauty.Inside the temple crammed with sarcophagi there is not so much light, and the stones seem to keep the secular fear that the Sacaúntos spread for every corner of this province, I confess that the throttler was late in closing, to get in the car and to return to the city.


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