One of my frustrations with Camino guidebook-writing is that, by the nature of the format, it requires a mile-wide, inch-deep kind of discussion. There are a million interesting stories on the Camino, which means each gets a line or two in the book and no more. This isn’t a knock on guidebooks; it’s just a limitation of the genre.
My goal for my new book, then, which I’m referring to in my head as The Camino Companion, is to spotlight those stories in more detail, giving them room to breathe. I’m still using guidebook stages as an organizational tool, so there will be 32 chapters, with one story that is specific to the area spotlighted within each stage. Most chapters will be in the 2000-2500 word range, long enough to do some justice to the story, while still being short enough to read in an albergue at night, before collapsing into slumber.
I’m quite excited about how this is coming together. I’ve learned a ton and I think pilgrims will find a lot of interesting new details within the pages of the final product. I’ll share one (unedited rough draft) chapter below. If you’re interested in seeing more, I’m posting chapters and accompanying short videos every other day (give or take) in my Patreon.
Chapter 26: O Cebreiro – Triacastela: Galicia’s Hórreos
Here’s a challenge: during the peak of walking season, in the spring or summer, log into one of the big Camino-focused Facebook groups. Keep your eyes peeled. At some point, someone is going to share a photo of a small stone or wooden structure, along with a question, something like: “I keep seeing these everywhere! What are they?” If a full week passes without you encountering this question once, I owe you a café con leche.
But if you’ve completed a Camino through Galicia (and neighboring Asturias), you already know the answer. It’s an hórreo. And I could just as easily challenge you to walk a kilometer in Galicia without seeing one, feeling equally secure that I won’t have to pay out. You simply can’t have a typically quaint Galician village, its granite houses sprinkled around seemingly haphazardly, without hórreos perched somewhere in the surrounding yards.
Because hórreos are quintessentially Galician, though, and the limited writing that exists on the subject is mostly in Galego, the Galician language, people in the English-speaking world know little about them beyond the simple translation: corn cribs. It’s admittedly easy enough to leave it at that–mystery solved, story completed. If you’ve ever read anything about European forays into the “New World,” though, there’s an inconvenient fact rattling around in the back of your brain. Corn, or maize, didn’t originate in Europe. It was introduced far later, after it was discovered in Mesoamerica.
The Asturian admiral Gonzalo Méndez de Canço gets the credit. He lived a fascinating life. He first traveled to America at age 17, and in time contributed three of his own ships (one of which was named El Apóstol Santiago) to the royal navy. In 1595, elevated by that point to the rank of admiral, he was called to Puerto Rico to help defend the island (and a significant treasure stashed there) against notorious bane to Spain, Sir Francis Drake. De Canço acquitted himself quite well. In the first clash, a cannonball shattered the mizzenmast of Drake’s flagship, while a further 28 balls blasted his cabin to bits. After licking his wounds, Drake ordered a counter-strike, and de Canço thwarted him once more, sinking nine English ships and killing 400 Englishmen in the process. This would represent one of only two defeats in Drake’s prolific career. Building off this success, de Canço was soon awarded the role of governor of La Florida, arriving in St. Augustine in June 1597. In between heated clashes with the Guale tribes, de Canço’s attention was increasingly focused on corn. He promoted intensive cultivation all over Florida, sharing tools and seeds with settlers and indigenous people alike, while also building a mill to process the grain. Finally, when Philip III opted to replace him in 1603, de Canço made the long trip home, but he did so with two packages of seeds, destined to be planted in his birthplace (Tapia de Casariego) and his wife’s (Mondoñedo), both on the Camino del Norte.
Corn transformed agriculture in Northwest Spain. Before its arrival, cereal harvesting flowed in annual cycles, with wheat or rye growing in the winter, and millet predominating in the summer. Corn quickly became the summer crop of choice, planted in late April and harvested in October. Despite its dominance, it permitted some crop diversity. Space is required between rows of corn for optimal growth, but things like beans and pumpkins could be raised in those areas, and often were. The shift to corn allowed farmers to abandon the fallow periods that once marked the months between winter and summer, and encouraged the draining of wetlands to promote even greater growth. In comparison to millet and rye, corn enjoyed a superior agricultural yield, which was boon to local landlords, who over time were able to raise rents by 300-400%.
And yet, for all that, its early implementation was a borderline disaster. As the poorest inhabitants of Galicia and Asturias replaced millet with corn as their primary source of cheap calories, their health was lost somewhere in the maize. The problem has subsequently been diagnosed as niacin (Vitamin B) deficiency, or Pellagra. Indigenous farmers in the Americas had long understood how to best prepare the grain. A critical step in the process is called “nixtamalization,” which allows for niacin and tryptophan to be absorbed by the consumer. Early Europeans in the Americas were taught to soak the corn in calcium hydroxide, which accomplished this goal. Unfortunately, their peers back in Spain didn’t get the instruction manual, just the seeds. While Pellagra was diagnosed in Spain in 1735, it was endemic in Southern Europe for two centuries, and it would later, according to Karen Clay and colleagues, cause “more deaths than any other nutrition-related disease in American history” in the American South in the early 1900s.
Nonetheless, the corn train had left the station, and there was no stopping it. With corn, Galicia was now ready for corn cribs. As spotty as the historical record is, though, we have some evidence that indicates that the latter actually preceded the former. In 1219, King Alfonso XI transferred ownership of present day Betanzos (on the Camino Inglés). That doesn’t matter to the present discussion. What does, though, is this line from the document, delineating the property under discussion: “and on the other side, on the path leading to your hórreo, except the same hórreo with its yard…” In the same century, we also find the first visual representation of an hórreo, in the Cantigas de Santa María. The small drawing features three hórreos, quite similar to the structures we see today. What’s the deal?
To answer that question, Veronica Lorenzo-Luaces Pico’s work, Agricultural Temples in the Iberian Landscape, Larders from the Past, offers an invaluable overview of the hórreo’s evolution. Well before corn, as we know, cereals were grown throughout the region; even the Iron Age castro culture is linked to millet production. And certainly, some sort of structure would be required to preserve and protect the harvested grain. In those early days, a proto-hórreo structure, known as a cabazo, was employed. Constructed from small, interwoven branches, and shaped more like a barrel, these deteriorated and decayed over time, leaving little evidence. They haven’t been forgotten entirely, though; some modern cabazos can still be found in Galicia today. In time, the more familiar, rectangular-shaped structures emerged, such as we see in the Cantigas, mostly built from wood in those early days. Pico’s close analysis is helpful here, because similar doesn’t mean identical, and there’s a crucial design difference in those 13th-century hórreos: they lack cross-ventilation slots.
This is an easy–but critical–design element to appreciate about contemporary hórreos. For a long time, I couldn’t understand why these became a staple in Spain, and yet were entirely absent from the United States. Why didn’t we develop similar corn cribs in my home country? There are, of course, plenty of factors that come into play here, and certainly corn storage facilities did develop. The key difference, though, is the climate. In the United States, corn can complete the ripening process in the field; the conditions are dry and warm, allowing for this to play out naturally. By contrast, Galicia’s climate is not so accommodating. Corn has to be picked when the humidity level is still quite high, meaning that a different process has to be followed for drying out the grain. This is the beauty of hórreos. Corn is stacked deliberately within, divided into sections using cross-planks, which provide channels for air to pass through consistently. The hórreo itself is typically positioned in open areas or on elevated slopes, where it can better catch a breeze. Agrarian researchers have studied this. O. A. Perez-Garcia and colleagues measured the effect. When the outdoor humidity is at 90% or higher–hardly a rarity in Galicia–the indoor humidity, within the hórreo, is more than 5% lower. By contrast, when the outdoor humidity drops below 65%, the interior humidity actually climbs by 3%. The hórreo, it turns out, has a stabilizing effect, maintaining a more consistent temperature and humidity level within which the corn can be better preserved.
Pilgrims on the Camino del Norte, walking through Asturias, will discover some key differences between the Asturian and Galician hórreos. Unlike their rectangular peers, Asturian corn cribs tend to be square-shaped, with very few openings in the walls, and they typically feature broad porches. Form follows function; in Asturias, corn is dried on the porch before being moved inside for storage. By contrast, hórreos in Portguals tend to be even narrower rectangles than what finds in Galicia.
That is, of course, just one of many design differences. Part of what makes hórreos so charming to visitors is their aesthetic qualities. The Spanish geographer Ignacio Martinez Rodriguez did critical work here, developing a typology of hórreos to helpfully classify the significant varieties. Class, it should be noted, is bound up in this richness. Once corn established itself in the region, a curious phenomenon developed. While eating corn became associated with poverty, given the abundance of more nutritious (and pricier) alternatives, harvesting corn was a mark of wealth and distinction, a testament to the amount of land owned by the estate. As such, it wasn’t enough to simply establish a functional hórreo; it needed some panache!
To become a more discerning hórreophile, start by considering the materials. Is it made out of wood, stone, or a mixture of the two? Mixed-material hórreos are most common, perhaps 70% of all hórreos, usually combining stone frames and wooden sides. Stone varies by region, but is typically either granite or slate; the wood is primarily chestnut. Next, consider the base. Is the structure supported by legs or shear walls? Some method was necessary, of course, to keep mice and other pests from the grain. The legs alone were not enough; look closely and you’ll likely see small channels inscribed around the base of the legs, which fill with rainwater to better fend off ants. Shear walls became desirable when storage spaces were added beneath the hórreo, maximizing the real estate value. If stairs are required to reach the corn, they are nearly always detached from the heart of the structure, to protect its integrity.
For many, the most appealing element of hórreos is the ornamentation that embellishes the structures. Crosses are, without a doubt, the most common feature, but Pico has found that they appear on less than half the extant hórreos, and are more common on stone than wood. Mixed-material hórreos, on average, are more sparingly adorned, but when they do feature decorations, they can be quite diverse. Keep an eye out for bell towers, sundials, weathervanes, animals, and saints. Older folk beliefs sometimes survive on hórreos as well. These often manifest as phallic symbols, speaking to fertility. The symbols of the snake and the cosmic tree are also important, though; the former embodied the annual life cycle in ancient Galicia, while the latter formed a conduit between earth and sky, through which the spirits might move.
As effective as hórreos are, modern technology certainly offers alternatives. They aren’t as critical as they once were. Despite that, though, Galicia has embraced the structure. The region’s tourism website declared it “the land of the 30,000 hórreos,” reflecting a common estimate for the total number of corn cribs in Galicia. Spain went a step further, passing a law in 1973 mandating the protection of all historic hórreos in Galicia and Asturias. Even if their primary function declines in usefulness, their secondary function–shining brightly as a distinct cultural marker–is sure to thrive for centuries to come.
Keep reading…
Ignacio Martinez Rodriguez, El Hórreo Gallego
Ron Dulaney Jr., “The Galician Hórreo and its Cultural Fields,” The International Journal of Design in Society
A. Perez-Garcia, et. al., “Evaluation of traditional grain store buildings (hórreos) in Galicia,” Spanish Journal of Agricultural Research
Veronica Lorenzo-Luaces Pico, Agricultural Temples in the Iberian Landscape, Larders from the Past
