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And there she is. For as long as I can remember. Magnificent…
And there it will remain, forever, if they let it, magnificent and undaunted by criticism… my dear and beautiful Bay of Santander.
Considered by Unesco (and above all by its inhabitants) to be one of the most beautiful in the world, I remember seeing, among the lights and shadows of the passing of time, hundreds of small dark silhouettes that crossed it from east to west at every low tide, between the silver glitter of the sparkling waves… Who were they? Who lived inside these anonymous figures? What were these little shapes doing in the distance, crouching in the shallows of the ebb and flow of the tide?
I think I always knew the answer, though in truth I never cared. Like most of the inhabitants of the ‘other side’, the more ‘prosperous’ north shore. Until now… Because suddenly you realise that you’ve spent most of your adult life telling stories across the seas. Far away, always far away. Across an ocean.
And suddenly you return home once a year, like nougat at Christmas, after one of many adventures, and you remember this army of mysterious silhouettes….
And I look for them, every day, every time I look out of the window of my youthful house towards Peña Cabarga. But they are gone.
Or almost…
(Silence)
In our beloved Bay, since our origins, since the Palaeolithic, an extractive activity has been developed: shellfishing. Our most ancient ancestors, intelligent and hungry at the same time, recognised the importance of molluscs as a source of protein and nutrients. Not only were they easy to come by, but they tasted good and were plentiful in all the wastelands… The intense flavour of the sea that we love so much…
And so we stayed, generation after generation. Centuries and centuries of gathering shellfish from the beloved Mother Bay that gives everything. Shellfishing out of sheer necessity. What takes away hunger and chases away stomach rumbles. An activity half work and half condemnation, almost marginal, relegated to the most needy, who found in it a way to help the battered and scarce family economy…
And suddenly, almost without warning, between the 60s and 80s of the last century, the «golden age of the clam» arrived. The result of an unprecedented economic boom in the country, which logically led to an increase in the consumption of seafood, much in demand by the new wealthy classes. Especially clams and muergos, from Pedreña, of course. The city became the perfect epicenter of top quality shellfish, with more than 500 tonnes of fine mussels and 3000 tons of muergos being marketed every year… A golden age that is now forgotten and only lives on in the memories of the oldest shellfish gatherers, now retired.
Decades ago, at every low tide, you could find thousands of people collecting shellfish in the vast sands of the bay. Mostly women. Almost all women. Hundreds and hundreds of women, tanned in a thousand battles, searching among the waves for a worthy way to feed their offspring…
Women, always women.
Vivacious. Courageous, hardworking, determined and with character. Anonymous. Always mindful of the family, the children, the house, the animals and, above all, the weather and the ebb and flow of the tides. Attentive to the nuances of the wind. They raised their eyes and asked the saints in the sky to spare them another day of the troublesome solano (north-east) and ábrego (south) winds, which made the waters that flooded the highlands so hot and furious that the mussels would not open and would no longer mark their eyes.
A daily and constant fight for survival. By day and even by night. In winter and summer. Cold, heat, rain and sun. The heights wait for no one. Especially not for those who are not ready and prepared. A constant struggle in search of the elusive eyes that reveal themselves in the dark and sometimes grumpy surface of the sea bed.
Amayuelas, Cabras, Japonicas, Arrechuces, Almejas de perro, Chirlas, Gurriaños, Verigüetos, Muergos, Morgueras, Torcidas… Valuable and precious fauna, inhabitants of the green «highlands», delights for the most exquisite and refined palates.
Mud and more mud. Mud and more mud. This slime that swallows you up to your knees and forces you to try harder than necessary to keep your body upright… Cold, damp, the kind that soaks into your bones… Hours and hours with your back up and the water up to your knees. At sea. This feminine, flirtatious and dangerous sea that seduces so much. Between the tides and the silence. Just looking for the right mark. Scratching the hard mud with the bare hand, the scraper, the trente or the francao. With the glass as a condemnation, always tied to the waist…
Rain that caresses the face. A strong wind that threatens a hurricane. The constant sizzle of water covering everything.
On the heights, time stands still. Distant sounds disappear. Silence is all-encompassing. On the moor, only the whisper of the water and the echo of your own footsteps accompany each moment of the hard day on the way back. Home…
Then came the final years of the eighties and their inevitable crisis. The bad nineties, when the fairy tale went down the drain. The beginning of a debacle that continues to this day… Since then, the fairy tale has come to an end for a number of reasons that are not entirely clear and on which no one can agree.
The pollution of the water and its warming due to the much-discussed climate change. Poaching, which destroys everything without any control and which has no respect for size or age. The indiscriminate fishing on the shores of the bay and the overexploitation of the marshes. The constant filling and dredging… There is only one objective premise left: the gradual disappearance of shellfish is a fact, and therefore the lack of professional permits for shellfish harvesting in these waters has mortally wounded this activity, historically carried out by brave women…
Women, always women.
(Silence)
Today I met my dear Geli again. To return to the highlands. In search of Amayuelas. One more day…
Today, like yesterday and tomorrow, if her knees and her back allow it, she will go back to the cold sand to «scratch» a little further, at the next tide, in search of the good mussel, the mother mussel, while Victor waits for her, always alert and attentive, from the balustrade of the coastal promenade…
Time passes. Inexorably. The tides rise… and fall. The wind, even if it changes its components, never stops blowing. But history is eternal, as are memories…
And so it goes on. Alone now. The last link in a chain of hardened shellfish gatherers who preceded her, and to whom I would also like to pay tribute from these pages, now in their well-earned retirement.
Always Geli. Like an Amazon ready to fight. Stoic and ready to go out at low tide for her daily appointment with the dry waters of the Cantabrian Sea in search of her precious delicacies. Alone, always alone. Equipped with all her gear. Captaining her little and inseparable Anvi (from Ángela and Víctor, her children) through the meanders of the Cubas in search of better beaches. Wrapped in her neoprene suit to avoid the icy winter winds of the sea. A woman. Independent. Free.
Geli, always Geli. A sly smile and straight talk. Without mincing her words. Rude, yet loving and close. A tough heroine with open eyes. Northern strong woman. From the real North. From the North that gets up early. The one that never stops working, up there in the highlands, at home or anywhere else.
She is, although it pains her to admit it and she tries to avoid this dubious honour as much as possible, the last Amayuelera. The last shellfish gatherer of our beloved Santander Bay. The true guardian of its waters… and its secrets.