Saudade

Defined by the Royal Galician Academy as ‘an intimate feeling and mood caused by the longing for something absent that is being missed.’ Nowhere in Spain is this more acutely felt than in Galicia.

Whilst other regions lay claim as to the heart of the country’s life and culture, Galicia offers a window into the very soul of Spain. Here the secular collides with the all-pervasive spiritual essence of the Catholic Church; fanned by the throngs of pilgrims who make the journey each year across northern Spain following the ‘Camino de Santiago’. The wistful longing for completeness, or saudade, is a thread linking religious life, Galician literature, and local political aspirations.

For centuries the Galicians have striven to carve their own identities away from the centre of power and political life in Madrid. ‘El camino’ does not end at the magniicent shrine of St James in Santiago de Compostella. It continues westwards, only to inally trail away at Cape Finisterre as it meets the Atlantic Ocean. Here many generations of emigrants to the New World caught their last glimpse of Spain as they sailed away from the economic hardships of the 19th and early 20th centuries. But those that leave have never relinquished a sharing of saudade with those generations who have remained and overcome the hardships of modern daily life.