A Fisherman's Festival at Cape Finisterre, Spain

Abstract

CAPE FINISTERRE, in Spanish Galicia, is nearly the most westerly point of the Iberian Peninsula. Its peculiar shape and situation made it a place of pilgrimage long ago. It is a promontory extending in a southerly direction from the mainland, and it forms an arm of the Bay of Finisterre and the Corcubi6n river. To withstand the onslaught of Atlantic gales and stormy waves up to thirty metres high and more, it has to be of very hard rock. It is granite. The cliffs fall almost sheer down to the sea, covered with tufts of dwarf gorse, coarse grass and those dear little wild pinks which grow between boulders, and whose sisters grow on the shore of Finistbre, in Brittany. A powerful lighthouse on the tip of Cape Finisterre, watches over the fishing fleet as well as the numerous large ships that pass its rough and rugged coastline. This coast is called la costa de la muerte the coast of death because every year ships are wrecked along its treacherous cliffs, dented by the ravages of the ocean. A Roman watch tower, or lighthouse, was erected in the vicinity but a large part of the cape is now a military zone so visitors are not welcome. The village of Finisterre nestles comfortably on the side of the bay facing the mainland. It is picturesque, has steep and narrow streets, and possesses two harbours protected by a derelict fort. Its main focus of interest is concentrated on fishing like the other pretty little villages dotted along the opposite side of the bay, squatting in their green romantic landscape. The lush vegetation and mellow colouring is reminiscent of parts of Wales and Ireland. It is a Celtic land full of legends and superstitions of undoubted common parentage with the ancient main stream of Celts. Two waves of Celts came over the Pyrenees across the northern part of