Quitans - A Study of a Typical Galacian village
Quintans is typical of the numerous villages we cycled through – small, quaint, interesting, a real mix of the old and the new, and seeming to doubt if it had a reason to exist in future. There were really old skeletons of houses hundreds of years old, old houses built of stone and still occupied, new modern houses, large modern feeding barns for dairy cows, large maize silage stacks, modern and large farm equipment and hand carts. The missing element that was most disconcerting was the lack of children. We saw very few. There were lots and lots of elderly sipping their espressos and smoking but very few young families. The countryside is rolling hills clad in forest – pines, eucalypts, cedar and native species - and green productive valleys. They don’t lack rain but they do seem to lack fertiliser. The maize crops looked malnourished and the pasture was disastrous. But it was all green. There are lots of granite rocks and outcrops - hence the stone houses - which mak...
