Fisterra

 

Ildara Enríquez García

I remember the first time I came to Fisterra. I must have been only eight years old. I remember being completely astonished by the roughness of the place: the fearsome combination of the cliffs, the strong winds, and the waves that danced aggressively under my feet. They called it Fisterra after the Latin words Finis terrae, which literally mean “land’s end”. Long ago people believed that this cape was the actual place where the world ended, and many men refused to sail those waters in fear of falling down the edges of the earth. Before the Romans came this place was the home of the Celts, who settled in the highest geographical points to protect themselves from the enemy. At the very top of this mountain they built an altar to the sun, which was later called the Ara Solis by Decimus Junius Brutus. As the story goes, the Celts used to come here to see how the last beams of the sunset would carefully drown themselves into the sea water. It became a sort of ceremony, and so many people started to do their own pilgrimage to admire the death of the sun.
 Now I’m one of them. I’m standing here today, at the end of all things, at the verge of this abrupt cliff where the world seems to disappear and suddenly reappear with the strikes of thousands of solitary waves. As I stare at this dark sea, somehow hypnotized by the calm waltz of the waves, I think about all the people that came here before me; I think about their pilgrimage and the burdens they carried with them. I wonder if they were as heavy as mine are. I think of the voyage they made in search for an answer, and I wonder if they did get what they were looking for. I can hear their voices from the distance, mingled with the soft murmur of the sea. The wind plays gently with my hair and I wait for the spectacle to begin. I am a descendant of the Celtic tribes, and I’m standing here, at the end of all things; at the end of the world, where the sun meets the sea.