Introduction

Blog of the research of the case of Manuel Blanco Romasanta, known as “Sacamanteigas”, first lycanthrope registered in the files of the European justice.

Tuesday, May 19

Ourense and the Ourense's Historical Provincial File (AHPO)

Ourense seems to be frozen in the time of the Sacamanteigas. The small streets squares and the cathedral of the center resembles not to have changed since Romasanta, the Sacamanteigas entered in the jail of this city in August, 1852.
The ouresan heat contrasts strongly with my cloth, since though I found out about the climatology in the network, it is not easy to pass from the 44,6 ºF (7 ºC) of yesterday at these hours, in Michigan, to 85 (29,5) of Ourense.
The people are kinds when one asks them on the street, and a lady of medium age, very made up, offered to accompany me from the Major Plaza up to Ourense's Historical Provincial File (AHPO), which is in the building of the Arqueological Museum of Ourense, that had just left my left side, but on the part of behind.
This file smells as all. You can notice how the powder enters in your nose grain by grain. The smell is a mixture of dampness and old paper in unstoppable long decomposition sometimes for the acids of the ink that it supports. (There is a curious sentence to which is submitted the paper of the historical documents). The Building is very big, and they tell me that it belonged to a high cargo of the Catholic Church, here it had deep roots. But the space dedicated to the files is rather small judging by the heaps of books from the soil to the roof that they overstock the receiver.
In the second one to walk there are seven civil servants decked of white dressing-gown who with my presence are distributed immediately by the Room of Consultation.
In the second floor there are seven civil servants decked of white dressing who with my presence are distributed immediately by the Room of Consultation.
The room is like others: shelves of former books, big tables with only a chair in each one, and many pencils and no pen.
Still now, after 6 hours checking documents I have the hands full of these brilliant particles that are in the paper because of the processes of degradation of the ink.
When they invite me to sit down, I show them the accreditation of the Lycan Foundation, that without so much interest gave it back to me. Then I request the Box 8938, finding out that my Portuguese is more oxidized than I believed.
The civil servants work in a silent way, is as if they had been contagious of the sorrow of the centuries of the files that they keep and custody, and it is what made them conceive the time in fractions different from the citizens of the studding of narrow sidewalks of down.
When already the hands of the restlessness tremble to see, to touch, to read and smell the papers that once were in Manuel Blanco Romasanta's presence, they open the box to me on a big empty table to discover that the documents of the " Cause 1788 of the wolf-man of 1852" were not there. After a brief search for other bordering boxes, for my frustration only the photocopies of the case appear,. They explain me that the original documents are in the Historical File of the Kingdom of Galicia in A Coruña, where also I had thought to go, since there are the papers of the appeal of the judgement in the court of this city.

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