From the ages of darkness to the discovery of America, the world was flat. The sun came up in the Orient, in the Empire of the Rising Sun, and died in the Occident (occidere, to kill), becoming fiery red as it sank into the Atlantic. It set over the Finis Terrae of the Romans (where they erected the ara solis, or altar to the sun), the coast of the dead and the woods of the Celtic Druids, the present Costa de la Muerte, or Death Coast.
The rising and the setting of the sun are two cosmic shows taking place on the confines of the continent of Eurasia. Every night, hundreds of Chinese and tourists climb to the top of the Tai Shan mountain in eastern China to watch the sun rise from among the clouds beneath them.
Every evening for millions of years, the Galician coastline witnessed the drama of the descent of the sun into the shadowy sea, the sea of unfathomable chasms which no sailor was brave enough to ply. Nowadays, however, the observer enjoys the magnificent beauty of a firmament flooded in a symphony of orange, pink and purple hues. Eventide is the sky’s moment of glory, as the sun sets and night falls.
The Milky Way also reaches Finisterre. In prehistoric times, this, the Way of the Stars, was set between parallels 42º 36’ and 42º 46’ as a route of civilisation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, clearly the result of the advanced knowledge of astronomy and astrology coming from the cultures of the Middle East. There are still archaeological remains of this route, along with a number of place names deriving from the word estrella, or star. Thus, on both sides of the Catalonian Pyrenees, we find Pic d’Estelle, Puig d’Estelle, Puig de les Tres Estelles and Les Esteilles; and, in Navarra, both in Basque and in Spanish: Estella or Lizarra, and Lizarraga (star cluster).
The symbolism of stars is reflected in the discovery of the tomb of St. James the Apostle, or Apóstol Santiago (a motionless star drew the attention of the eremite, Paio) and, on the grave of Charlemagne, two rows of stars point significantly in the direction of Compostela. Although the Road to Santiago comes to an end at Compostela, some pilgrims carry on to Finisterre as a way of recalling the Way of the Stars (the scallop, the shell carried by the pilgrims, is a maritime symbol of the goddess, Venus).
For the millions of foreigners who think that Spain’s landscape is like the one described in the Quixote and for the millions of tourists who are familiar with Mediterranean Spain, Galicia is another world. It is the land of the Atlantic, of the thousand rivers, of leas and autochthonous forests, with an overwhelming assortment of fresh, succulent shades of green.
This is nature in its pure state, the understructure of biodiversity, with unique species which can only be described as metaphors: from the goose barnacles, appearing like geological gnarls on the seabeaten rocks, to the river lamprey, a true, prehistoric, living fossil, not to mention Ría de Corme y Laxe. A Coruña the ecological wonder of thousands of horses roaming free in the mountains.
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