Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too

PART ONE OF TWO

Daniel Campo had been called in to assess a situation. Casa Mora, the most popular and oldest bakery in the casco vello (old part) of Santiago de Compostela, had suffered a break-in. Everybody knows that when a crime is committed - in this place, a robbery - the normal thing to do is to call law enforcement. That’s their job. That was not the case this time.

Daniel was called, not because he was a detective or a police officer, but because he was considered to be the best young historian of the city. The bakery’s owner was convinced that Daniel would have knowledge of the building’s history and that this knowledge would shed light on where the break-in had occurred. After all, he worked as an archivist in one of the cultural institutions and his family had always lived in the city. He was a real picheleiro, a Compostelan. Local lore was his natural calling. Local history and Galician history in general, was his profession. That was what mattered. 

There is a logic to these things. Contacting Daniel Campo as opposed to another local boy was a perfect example of local thinking. Don’t call just anybody for help when you need somebody to find the answer to a puzzle: call the person who will be able to provide the answers. In this case, the long-time bakery trusted the answers Daniel might be expected to provide, given his home towner status. This reasoning is circular and repetitive, and it’s really what matters here. There is really no way out of the old web, so don’t even try.

Nobody could figure out where the thief or thieves had gotten inside the locale of Casa Mora, because of the architecture. First of all, the shop, set in one of the best parts of the arched medieval street, was completely walled in on two sides. Then, second, the front window beneath the stone awnings of Rúa do Vilar was intact. No heavy object had been used to try to shatter the strong glass nor to break off the massive lock. On top of that, the rolling metal curtain protecting the shop window had been pulled down and closed, using another impressive metal padlock that curled around a huge hook set firmly into a stone in the street. You might need to see this ancient device to fully understand how it worked.

All the little shops in the area did the same thing, completed the same ritual, every evening. It was the way you closed up nightly, which was usually around nine o’clock, unless it was a holiday and there were a lot of people out. Then closing hour got later and later. There’s no need to adhere to a strict schedule in places like this. The social space is organic and the flow of foot traffic is the deciding factor.

Finally, the back door of Casa Mora was thick and heavy, studded with wrought iron reinforcements and bolted pretty much all the time. It was on the back wall, concealed in a storage area. There was not a crack anywhere in the bakery for a thief to enter. Anybody who was from the city would know this. Medieval construction was meant to withstand the passage of time. Iron, granite, wood of the chestnut tree: the Holy Trinity of Galician architecture since the ninth century, give or take a hundred years.

For all of these reasons, Number 50 on the Rúa do Vilar was impenetrable from any of the four sides. Nobody could get into the shop if there were not a person with a key - the right key - available to open it.

Daniel stood outside the front window with the name of the shop painted on it in red and black. He looked in at the exquisite truffles and the cream—filled croissants for a minute or two, as if searching for anything that might be out of place. Then he looked around him, almost on a swivel, taking in a panoramic view. In executing this full circle, he realized that entry as they were thinking it might have happened, was completely impossible. None of the four sides of Casa Mora would ever be vulnerable to a break-in, not a century ago and not now. He then realized that it was wrong to limit points of entry to the four walls and the two doors - one of which was rarely, if ever, used - of the locale. That meant only one thing: look up or down. Ceiling or floor.

Then Daniel began to think very hard, first, about the narrow, well-worn street Rúa do Vilar, one of quite a few in Santiago that were only open to pedestrians. After that, he thought about the one that ran in back of Rúa do Vilar: Rúa do Franco. Franco Street had been named for the Franks and other hordes of pilgrims that had lavished vows, faith, and disease on Compostela since around the tenth century. It was always so full of visitors, fake and real, that locals tended to avoid the narrow little street. Daniel, in contrast, could tune out the rabble-rousers and hear the city’s heartbeat. He did not try to avoid the street if his destination in Santiago was most easily reached by using it. He felt like a time traveler when he did that, ignoring the crowds and listening to his own thoughts. He also felt invisible. Kind of a game he played with himself.

Wherever you have centuries layered mercilessly one on top of another, with continuous occupation of a site, you know the populace will have found ways to create alternate routes. There is always a reason to escape, to hide, to meet in secret. When a city is built on a higher elevation, like Santiago is, it is even more likely to have some of those routes carved out below the surface. Santiago is 853 feet above sea level, so it had lots of room for things to be packed beneath its streets and plazas. 

Important buildings at the pinnacle; secret meanderings at the base and inside the hill. It isn’ such a unique concept. Take La Guardia, known for its excellent Rioja, a Basque wine. The whole villa is a honeycomb beneath the surface because the cool, dark space is perfect for wine cellars and there are numerous producers of the beverage. The Basques know everything about wine-making, but Galicians aren’t far behind. It’s just that different grapes and climate produce a very different beverage. 

So while Daniel was not thinking of La Guardia exactly, he did know of that town and others that were known for their unique storage arrangements for provisions. He began to think about the building itself where Casa Mora was, and he considered the previous establishment in that spot, number 50. The bakery had been there for close to a century, but the houses were at least three centuries older than that, if not more. They weren’t separate houses, of course, but rather segments of a long construction that had long ago been occupied by a string of residents. You could say it was like medieval duplexes, or rowhouses, but that would only be an approximation. 

These ‘houses’ were all lined up in an uneven line, and they had been through a lot over the years. They definitely would have ties to the neighboring ‘houses’ or ‘casas’ that formed the gray, serpentine structure that flanked Rúa do Vilar. The ties could be of any sort, including passageways. Santiago was said to have many of those passageways in subterranean locations. People talked about them, but if pressed to affirm they existed, they would draw back and look uncertain. It was strange the way people reacted to the idea of tunnels running all over beneath the surface. 

Nevertheless, it was true that you could just scratch the surface of any of the old streets and history would come rushing at you. The Museo das Peregrinacións found this out not so long ago. The ditches that run beneath the Pilgrimage Museum and down toward Fonseca Square had once channeled water. Actually, water, too much of it, still runs through the ditches. There is so much water at times that it would overflow the ditches if they were restored. Some secrets are not meant to be revealed, it seems.

Casa Mora is not many steps away from the museum. Nobody was willing to state whether there was an underground space worth looking at. There might be something there, or there might be nothing.

The fact is that the full map of underground cavities and channels is yet to be published. Daniel was fully aware of this. Santiago de Compostela’s history ran deep, and if you knew where to look, there were unbelievable documents with unbelievable information about the city and its residents. He knew where to look, however, so he knew why they had called him. Still, all was casual, calm, on the surface.

“What has happened?” He asked Merche, the manager. At that moment the owner, Bieita Mora, had just come up to him, offering the ritual two kisses, one on each cheek. Bieita answered for Merche:

“We came into the storeroom this morning and discovered that our secret ingredient was missing. We were here last night until just after nine o’clock and arrived this morning at about nine o’clock. It must have happened during those twelve hours when nobody was in the bakery.”

“Did you forget to lock anything?” asked Daniel. It was a logical question.

“Absolutely not!” responded Merche, looking nervously at the owner, even though they were friends.

“Well, what is missing? And how did you discover it was missing?”

“It’s our secret ingredient. We put it in all our breads, pastries, chocolates, everything,” explained Bieita. “We can’t tell you what it is because then it wouldn’t be secret any longer. We noticed it was gone when we arrived his morning.”

Daniel was frustrated. The bakery had called him to come urgently, and he had reluctantly agreed, worried that the police wouldn’t appreciate his meddling or contaminating the scene. There is no sign of anything having been removed, but an ingredient was missing, according to the owner and manager of the business. It was a secret ingredient. One that apparently needed to remain secret. Yet no amount of expertise in the history of Santiago could be of any help if the missing item had no name...

A missing ingredient? A secret ingredient? Why won’t the bakery owner reveal it? Was that because it was an illegal substance? One that resembles powdered sugar, for example? Or maybe flour?” Daniel was uncomfortable. He knew a certain amount about baking and was skeptical that any legal ingredient could be so unique that nobody could ever know what it was. He didn’t want to think about sugary substances that might be something else after all.

“Why can’t you tell me what’s missing?” He sounded like he was pleading, and he was. The Moras and the Campos had known each other for quite a few years

Bieita Mora understood immediately, and decided she ought to provide more information for Daniel. He was a smart young fellow, his parents were respected santiagueses, and they (she and Merche, principally) really did prefer to work with him over working with the garda civil, whom the majority of the people didn’t trust. She looked at him directly, her face serious but not haughty (after all, she was the owner of the oldest, most prestigious bakery in Compostela). She began to speak:

“Daniel, you would not have had this experience eating one of our pastries, but people from other places have. More specifically, that experience almost always occurs with persons who are not from the Spanish State, not from Spain.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” Daniel was clueless, but he thought he shouldn’t be. He should know what Bieita was trying to tell him.

“I was trying to explain that our secret ingredient only applies to non-Galicians and it will not work on Spaniards, either. It may only partially work in Portuguese people, but that’s because they’re pretty much the same as Galicians (and vice versa). It also doesn’t work on all non-Galicians. Just some of them.”

“So what do you mean by ‘work?” queried Daniel, who found the verb to be an odd choice. Baked goods don’t ‘work’. Ingredients don’t ‘work’. Medical treatments do. They either work or they don’t. 

“What the ingredient does is cause certain customers to fall in love with Galicia.”

Daniel was seriously suspicious now. The falling in love idea was preposterous and more than a little corny or new age. The owner’s words made him doubt the veracity of the whole matter. Maybe the break-in had been staged. People were not above publicity stunts nowadays. There was always the chance that free publicity would bring in some extra revenue.

You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. That’s the old saying. That means the owner can’t call in a crime, then refuse to identify what has been stolen. That was what Bieita Mora seemed to be doing. Trying to attract more customers, probably. Was she getting greedy? Had the bakery’s fine reputation finally gone to her head?

“How do you know this happens?” Daniel was hoping for some clarity.

“Because the customers return. They return and tell us what they’ve done, how they feel. They return because they can’t help themselves.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.” He decided to be honest about his confusion. “It sounds like you put a spell on them.”

“Not at all. We discovered this by accident, to be honest. Secret ingredient? Maybe, to everybody else, but to us it was what we were offering to the people who bought our baked goods. We simply did what came naturally to us.”

The conversation continued for a few more minutes, with the owner and the manager always skirting around the issue of the unidentified ingredient and how and why it worked. The solving of the crime is actually beyond the scope of this story, unfortunately, but the truth will eventually be discovered. You can be sure of that. Santiago may have many hidden things, but they cannot be concealed forever. Sooner or later somebody will find out what happened and then everybody will know. Until then, we must be patient.

Epilogue

Words, music. At night and while making the pastries, breads, tarts, everything. These are the secret ingredients. The persons who create the flavors, the doughs, their shapes are the artists in the back room, which is a kitchen with ovens and burners, mixers and tools to cut and form the baked goods. They carry out their tasks, talking with one another and coaxing batters to behave. They also sing, tell stories, recite verses - anything that brings out the best in them and in the items they are crafting. If this could a little unbelievable, it shouldn’t. When work is carried out willingly, hopefully, confidently, the results of that work are better.

And so people who have little knowledge of Galicia have the good fortune of consuming its flavors, and they are drawn to the land that produced them - the chestnuts, walnuts, figs, grains, cream, eggs. They need to go to those places and want to understand them. It is a mystery of sorts, but it is also very natural. The land produces, the people mix and bake, and the consumers - the smart ones - can taste the rhythm and experience of the persons who work in Casa Mora’s kitchen. Nobody forgets a wine that was drunk in a special setting, with special food. Nobody forgets a pastry from Casa Mora.

Fields and flowers, scents and horizons. The bakers bring these to the kitchen and combine them with their language, the one they’ve spoken ever since the Romans arrived. This isn’t such a secret, really. How could the language be stolen?

There is an explanation, just as there is an explanation as to how the language can be recovered. Daniel Campo knows how to do this. He describes the method to Bieita and Merche, who immediately comprehend what he’s saying. It’s not a miracle, not anything out of any official history book, but it will work.

Please come back for the continuation and finale. Casa Mora deserves to continue for at least another hundred years, and so it will.