Inma Méndez Freije lost her shyness behind the bar of A Cantina de Castrillón, a shyness that dissipated while a village resident, Manolo da Torre, whispered to her how to make a carajillo con nata or a sol y tumba, and that It served her as a lifelong learning experience.
“I was always very shy and I, who am a speech therapist, have to deal with talking to families and colleagues in my daily life… when I see that I am blocked, I remember Manolo, who with his soft words gave me the strength to trust on myself when I had no idea how to serve what they asked of me.” Inma Méndez became great in a small place, and then she made that place great. He did it with his mother, María Freije, who has run this bar-shop for 18 years, the Castrillón bar that everyone affectionately calls A Cantina.
A bar-shop located in the town of Castrillón, in Boal, and that maintains life and pulse in one of the oldest areas of Asturias and where depopulation is hardest. Together, mother and daughter, not only do they provide coffee, food, drinks or beers, they also sell products in the store, listen and learn. “You are amazed at the level of some of the conversations that take place in A Cantina: politics, philosophy, poetry… the people of the towns have much more wisdom than we believe,” explains Inma Méndez.
It was precisely she who, enjoying the reality of A Cantina and realizing that in that bar was actually the most alive life of a rural Asturias that sometimes seems to fade away, decided to undertake a wonderful activity, putting a mailbox where people could write , write down and put inside that word that with the passage of time had become disused or forgotten: “scheicidal” words.
“They are nosa fala words, in Galician-Asturian, sayings, proverbs or riddles that in many cases were lost. In the mailbox we have collected hundreds and hundreds of words, and people have been very involved. We have a linguistic wealth that we cannot lose and I myself took charge of writing them down and uploading them to social networks,” she says. And so, Inma also removed the shyness of many of the people in the bar who did not know each other, but who looked at the mailbox and tried to jointly remember some word that would make them travel back to when they were little, to when the towns were full of people, when no one feared the abandonment of the rural area.
María, his mother, has been running this business for eighteen years, a bar-shop that opens every day without exception. Did she never get sick? “No,” he answers. “She did get sick, but she came to work anyway,” notes her daughter.
María took the reins of A Cantina when she was 43 years old and had four children. “It belonged to an uncle of mine who had always insisted that I keep the business, but the first time he proposed it to me I was a child and my father didn’t like bars at all. Afterwards it was run by a couple for many years and then, when they retired, “I was encouraged,” explains María, who conveys an astonishing and absolute serenity, that of a woman who wants to retire to travel, but who has not decided the destination. because they all serve him.
A woman who takes away the merits one by one because she has not stopped to think that they really are merits. “Before I had the bar-shop I took care of cows, then I came here thinking it was going to be less hard, and the truth is that life is hard just the same,” he points out. And he smiles again as the rich smell of his kitchen arrives, famous for its broth and stewed meat. Because María, who used to be a rancher, now continues to be one, but she is also a hotelier, a chigrera, a cook, and a mother and grandmother.
In recent years, and although Castrillón may seem to be far from almost everywhere, technologies have changed the life and reality of the bar, because the internet has also reached this small town in western Asturias, for better and for worse. bad.
It is true that there are fewer people, but it is equally true that there are plenty of screens. And when those thunderous silences were made, Inma’s head began to spin again, “because I am in love with village life and I like to come to this cantina every weekend. Those silences killed me, they had not happened before.” And there she thought again, remembering Manolo da Torre, who surely supported her in her initiative.
“I remembered the sheets that the priest distributed in the parish, Canteira, who died years ago and for whom we all had a special affection, and that they collected the day-to-day information of what was happening in the towns and I thought it was a good option to do here. And I did it, every month I publish one, on the front there is always some curiosity, or some traditional activity that we do in the bar or in the area is included. He always compiles a saying in “a nosa fala and behind there are hobbies.” “I like that people come in and pick it up, hold their phone and read it, some also take it home,” explains Inma.
And thus the silence of A Cantina was killed, the place where people from nearby towns meet, maintaining the best social network in the world, which is that of life. “They play the game, they debate, now we are starting with the chess games, people come to have lunch or dinner, in the end we are a family and it is the truth, at the new year I would ask that no one move from this bar, because when Someone dies, you feel it so much…” explains María.
It is precisely one of those forgotten words: “señardá” (nostalgia), which makes Inma’s skin crawl when she remembers Manolo da Torre and her, as a little girl, running behind that bar, between her mother’s apron. , school homework and afternoon coffees.
It was growing up in A Cantina that made him see life from another perspective, that in small places there can be the essence to change the world and to keep it alive. That is why they are still here and that is why Inma assures that she knows that when her mother retires and travels there will be someone taking the reins of A Cantina. “I’m getting romantic again, but I know. Maybe I..” and Inma’s lady returns to the bar counter and looks again at the corner from which Manolo da Torre always encouraged her.
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