The tracks of Romasanta

Nowdays it does not turn out easy at all re-compose the ways that Romasanta crossed once in his trips, not only to commit murders, but manny that walked and he revised to go of village in village selling his goods.
Is not necessary to say that the roads of this country did not exist at that time, and if you try to compose the tracks according to the testimonies of Romasanta himself, you will run up suddenly with rivers or mountains, highways or wild forest forests.

In the middle of 1800 all the families were possessing a huge patrimony of cattle, it is easy to imagine that the mounts would be more walked than they are today. Nowdays the number of heads of cattle is anecdotal, and even when they garther a good number don’t take them very far from the house to feed them , sometimes do not even take out them of the corrals, feeding them on forage.

Eufemia Montes, a neighbor who today lives in Quintá (Chandrexa de Queixa), but she was born in the Ferreiría, when ask her about Redondela by certain homesick:

“Ai, querido!, como non vou saber onde está a Redondela?, por desgracia funche ben veces alí, querido. Cun bo rabaño de cabras ou ovellas, porque as vacas non che rachaban*. Ía ata de ben meniña que non che podía nin coas calzas. A Redondela... que Deus a leve... déixaa estar. Catro veces che fun antes de emigrar para a Alemaña... usted enténdeme?...”

“Oh, darling!, how can I not know where is to the Redondela?, unfortunately I
was many times there, darling. With a good number of goats or sheeps, because
the cows do not cross. I was going even very young, so young that I could not
with the shoes. The Redondela... that God takes her ...leave to be. I was four
times before emigrating for to Germany ... do you understand me? ..."

Today there is not a road which crosses San Mamede's Mountain and Vilar de Barrio locality like Rebordechao with those of Montederramo as Mazaira or Fontedoso, and much less that it goes near to Redondela or of the Gorbias, as Romasanta would say in the confession to the justice. Always San Mamede's Mountain, is like an uncrossable door, which today it is necessary to cross doing lots of kilometers.

In fact the narrow roads that they bifurcate of the one that goes of Montederramo to villages as remote as Quintá or Santa Cruz (already in Chandrexa de Queixa's municipality) and that take the traveling salesman face Mazaira and Fontedoso one, and to Gabín other one, have its end in the last street of these villages.

There are almost no inhabitants in these villages that they know if it existed once these ways. In villages like Fontedoso (to 2,1 km from the detour up mentioned) it stays only a couple of Portuguese that came hier to to work of householders three years ago, and that to the death of their owner decided to stay " to take care " of properties of the deceased.

In the villages as Ferreiría, in Chandrexa de Queixa's Municipality, only remain two elders that with the years took the memory. In this village, according to Eufemia Montes's declarations a path was going out to Redondela, but nowadays there is not a road that communicates Ferreiría with the rest of the civilization!

If some of the old roads are preserved, today revoked in roads of double rail that join Rebordechao's zone (where Romasanta was residing) with Laza (where were from the two victims).

Until to the administrative division changed in this province, today, populations who once were the most populated, and judicial county capital or the capitals of the municipality, today are at the edge of the abyss of the abandon. It is Edrada's case, where he remains a neighbor, and that was the administrative capital of the Val do Conso, ownership that today Vilariño. Suspiazo's case (village that was staying for Romasanta's roads) between Rebordechao (Vilar de Barrio) and Montederramo, which today it belongs to Montederramo's municipality, of that one was a part of the domains of the mayor of Chandrexa de Queixa.

And there is a handicap more which I did not count. This province is crammed with Dams!, I have to admit that I was too American, and, being fed up with they being seen imprisoned from the roads that I am traveling in the last days, at all time I thought that they were lakes.

The presas were constructed all in the 20th century under the military dictatorship of Francisco Franco that the fratricidal war of 1936 put to the forehead of Spain. These reservations of water that were producing and they produce big quantities of energy (more of the one that can consume the whole province) they overwhelmed not only the ways that were outlining the mosaic of the archaic infrastructures of this country, but entire villages as Camba, or Alberguería, which of assurance the Sacauntos was visiting with the cluster of his work.