THE BLACK TIDES
My father used to say that the sea does not always return what is given to it. He said it without dramatics, while cleaning the gear at dusk, like someone talking about the weather or an old injury in his back. In Arousa we learn early on that there are truths that require no explanation.
I grew up watching him head into the ría before dawn and return when the light had already lost its strength. He never spoke about what happened out there. I never asked him. The sea, like certain people, is best respected in silence.
I saw the first Black Tide the year he died.
It wasn’t marked on any calendar. There was no warning. It simply happened.
That night the water stopped reflecting the sky. What appeared on the surface was not darkness, but a thick, oily sheen, as if the ría had turned itself inside out and exposed something that normally remains hidden. The smell arrived before the sight: spoiled seaweed, old metal, a presence that scraped at the throat with every breath.
The old men noticed at once. They shut the windows. Pulled down the blinds. No one said a word, yet every house seemed to be holding its breath.
I went down to the harbor.
I don’t know why. Perhaps because I had spent too many nights beside my father without understanding anything, and that was the first time I felt the sea was trying to explain itself.
The boats creaked against their moorings. Not because of the force of the water—the ría was almost still—but as if something were moving beneath, brushing against the hulls, testing their limits.
Then I heard the song.
It could not be called a voice. Nor was it a human sound. It was a low, repetitive rhythm that seemed to rise from the very mass of the water. It did not enter through the ears; it settled in the chest, in the teeth, in the memory.
I understood something terrible and simple at the same time: the sea remembered.
I saw figures on the sandbanks. I did not want to look at them directly. As a child I learned that there are things which, if observed too closely, never let you go. Even so, I sensed their outlines: bodies stretched beyond proportion, movements that did not follow any earthly logic, eyes placed where they should not exist.
They were singing.
And in doing so, the ría answered.
I did not see complete scenes, only fragments: structures sunken beneath the water, streets that obeyed no known geometry, enormous shadows moving through a city that never appeared on any map. Something immense, breathing with the patience of one who does not fear the passage of time.
I understood then why the cinema lights were turned on in Vilagarcía during those days. Not for culture. Not for tradition. But out of necessity.
From the harbor you could make out the uneven glow of the theaters. The light cast into the night seemed to fulfill a function older than the festival itself, as if someone were lulling something far too large for this world.
The song changed. It grew slower. Deeper. Less insistent.
The figures withdrew. The surface of the water began to clear little by little, as if the ría were accepting the bargain once more. The smell faded. The reflection of the sky returned, though slightly distorted, like a memory hastily put back together.
I stayed there until dawn.
When I returned home, I found my father’s boots by the door. They were damp, covered in that oily sheen that still stains my hands in my dreams.
No remains were ever found. There was no official mourning. The sea, as always, kept what it claimed.
Since then, every year, when the festival begins, I go down to the harbor in silence. I watch the water. I am grateful that the screens continue to light up.
Because I know what happens when there is not enough light.
And because, on some nights, when the wind comes from the west and the ría darkens more than usual, I hear the song again.
More distant.
More patient.
Waiting for someone to forget to project the next story.
