Bad day to be an octopus

“Hoy es feria.” Three words which every person living here will have said at some point. Today is market day.

Twice a month, on 13th and 28th, the market comes to town. These dates are fixed so that everybody in the tiny villages in the outlying area knows where it’ll be on any given day - on 14th and 29th it’ll be somewhere else in Galicia. It only changes if it falls on a Sunday or a Bank Holiday.

Feria days are among the rare occasions when the village feels busy, particularly in summer. People from the surrounding hamlets combine all the business they need to do in town into one visit, so numbers are up considerably, for a few hours at least.

The market places itself along either side of the roads at the top of the town, the Toral. You see what you’d see in pretty much any market anywhere; cheap clothes and toys, fruit and veg, household goods, ironmongery etc. And of course the ubiquitous knives which all Galician men seem to carry. Last time round, uncle M of Walk in the Park fame bought a penknife to replace an identical one he’d lost. It appears to my foreign eyes that the penknife is an extension of the Galego’s arm - I’ve seen M use if for everything from cutting away plant life outdoors to spooning jam onto his toast! So commonplace are they that I’ve taken to carrying one myself, since I keep being told I need to be more Galician. My own was gifted to my late father by visiting Spaniards, of course, and has elicited approving comments from the penknife cognoscenti here, being as it’s from Albacete, which is apparently a sign of quality.

The fresh produce is, as you might expect in a rural area, startling in its variety, size and quality. We just dragged home a bag containing, variously, about 200g of figs, about the same of cherries, then oranges, tomatoes, plums, nectarines, green chillies, lemons, pears, paraguayos (a sort of flat peach which I’ve seen only occasionally in Britain) and apricots. Over 5kg of fruit for a total of €10, heavy enough to have turned the stuff at the bottom of the bag into fruit puree under its own weight by the time I’d got it home.

One thing the locals look forward to more than anything on market day, though, is what follows it round: pulpeiros. The pulpeiros set themselves up outside all the bars in the town, heating giant cauldrons of water and stacking wooden plates in preparation to serve the one and only dish on their menus - octopus.

The locals adore this - boiled, chopped up and served on those wooden plates with olive oil and paprika, to many they're reason enough to come into town whether you need anything from the market or not. My partner particularly enjoys the bits with suckers on. This is one local delicacy for which I have no time - for me, it's fish-flavoured plastic with a horrible texture, which occasionally, if you get one of those suckers, feels like it's holding on to you. I don't want my food grabbing hold of me, frankly.

This view is of course the subject of some mirth and is yet one more thing that marks me out. Carrying a penknife around and enjoying a vermouth before lunch - which is eaten at 3pm - doesn't make me a local quite yet.