Pilar Eyre's childhood summer

• Carmen Mola The boat of our desires

• Javier Sierra The bite of the goose

When July arrived, the furniture was covered with white sheets, instructions were left for the concierge to water the geraniums, my father parked at the door of the house honking the horn and we stampeded out shouting "we're going to Galicia!" to fit six people into a Fiat, a model so old in a Spain with the longest post-war period in the world that it allowed the road to be seen through the floorboards.

My mother was carrying my little sister in her arms and the other two sisters and the nanny were behind, although my father would roar at us if he saw that we were falling asleep "don't lean on the doors!", the risk was to end up in the gutter and that the car continued its march without noticing it.

The trip lasted two days and had its own stages, like the Tour de France.

We stopped to weigh the huge Abrera porrones because they said that if you managed to catch them you could drink whatever you wanted (we never did, obviously), and on the steep slopes of Bruc we had to get out of the car, not to lighten the load, but to push it.

In Los Monegros we stopped at the Hostal del Ciervo to have a Coca Cola (with three glasses), and by now the overheated car stank unbearably of sweat and the sardine empanada that was going to be all our food.

In Calatayud we still had the courage to ask loudly about Dolores with a shudder of fear because my father told us that this question awakened the demon that all Bilbilitans carried inside,

, one year the headlights broke and my mother had to take a flashlight out the window that she made go up and down howling "alert alert!".

Another night he fell asleep at the wheel, luckily he was going so slowly that a cyclist woke him up and we were able to continue calmly.

I was never afraid.

In Los Monegros we stopped at the Hostal del Ciervo to have a Coca Cola

When we were about to enter Galician territory, we sang "we are arriving at Pénjamo", and once we crossed the line, "oliñas veñen", and here the nanny stayed in her village, where we would pick her up after two months, and we continued to the heart of Lugo, to the house of our grandparents.

Although others called it Pazo, for us it was simply Forge.

Our paradise, I have never known another!

When we saw the small bell tower of the chapel, my father always stopped the car.

He remained silent for a few seconds, closing his eyes

I never asked and the truth is that then I didn't care because we jumped out of the car to see who got to the gate first where our grandparents were waiting for us.

Our grandfather was an important man, but in the village he took off his jacket (not the tie), spoke Galician and paternally received everyone who came to ask him for advice and help, from representing the emigrant groom at a wedding by proxy, to getting them a I work in Barcelona. How many taxi drivers didn't want to charge me, I was already a university student, when they knew I was Don Francisco's granddaughter!

Then I would submerge myself in a sea of ​​cousins ​​and everything was already summer.

We fought to sleep in the attic because we could sneak out a little window carrying a bottle of wine we'd stolen from the kitchen and hidden under our pillows.

We crawled across the roof, jumped from impossible heights, and ran into the woods, climbing trees in the moonlight.

blackberries, some pears so small that we could barely bite, poppy leaves, even ants... We knew the names of the cows that came to the watering hole, the Marela, the Maruxa and the Catalana, named after us.

Our grandfather forced us to play with the numerous fatherless children that populated that time, children that nobody loved, and once he saw that I answered one with haughtiness, he slapped me.

I think it is the most important teaching I have received in my life.

And how can we forget the screeching of the carts pulled by the oxen that we knew how to imitate perfectly, iiiii aaaa, iii?

I would like to die with that music.

On the day of Santiago,

.

We sat down to eat at noon and it didn't finish until midnight.

My uncles and my father sang old songs of longing and feeling while the cousins, drunk from fatigue, from the sun, from the aguardiente that we stole from the glasses, hid under the table and held hands, because then we fell in love.

And we listened to the conversations of the elders and there is the source of my books.

Everything I know I learned when I was a child.

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