San Pedro

INTRODUCTION

I have to write a paper for my Communications 201 class. The first part of the paper is supposed to be about someone who is fighting to change their city neighborhood for the better. The second part is about a person who is trying to keep the neighborhood from changing.

Nothing in the professor's instructions indicates whether the paper should study two separate neighborhoods or whether it could be the same one, and residents are clashing over the proposals. 

"Just write what you know," his instructions tell me, but that's usually meant for fiction writers. Journalists might have an advantage if they know what they're writing about, but I'm not up to following Nelly Bly's techniques for getting an honest story.

I'm supposed to be writing a paper, something based on facts. Knowing the professor, this must be a test of how we separate facts from fiction, and I don't like it. Still, I need to pass this course, so I'd better get on with the assignment. 

How can two people look at the same thing and get two entirely different ideas from it? How can they both be right?

I think I'm beginning to understand the reasoning behind the paper topic.

Because I might not be Nellie Bly, but I actually do write better when I know a place or a person, I have decided to focus on the San Pedro Neighborhood where I grew up. I think it’ll be obvious why I chose it. San Pedro is more than a street, and I hope to show that. I don't have to tell you exactly where it's located, because this is really the story of two points of view and the battles that are fought. Where do we find truth and stop fighting?

The concept of positive and negative collage comes to mind now that I've been told to discuss preserving things versus changing them. I’ll explain that type of conflict, then will briefly consider how that relates to the very, almost too historic San Pedro Neighborhood. By the way, positive space refers to the main shapes or forms in an artwork. Negative space is the empty or non-interesting space between and around the main objects. Hold that thought.

It's easier to identify the positive and the negative when the shapes in question are the same. When we try to collage images and people onto San Pedro Street, we have to work hard to determine what's good and what's bad. One slip-up, and the whole piece, the whole neighborhood, falls apart.

I usually see the old, crumbling buildings as relics of the past. It happens with ageless chapels around the city. Somebody else might see them as places full of rats and spiders, ones needing to be turn down so new ones can be erected. The things around them matter more. The negative space the little chapels hold onto is bad. It needs to be removed, we need to fill in the holes with something people can see and above all, USE.

Definitions vary. I know that now, learned it while trying to write this paper.

Synchronicity is another concept that comes to mind. In Jungian theory, the term is used "to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection." Happenstance. Eerie. Haunting. San Pedro does that to me, but I don't know if I can describe the feeling accurately. I keep walking around the area, finding things that hadn't been there before, or so I think. Then while in another part of the city or in a different city altogether, I run into some things just like the ones back on San Pedro, only I don't know that because I haven't seen them yet. All roads don't lead to Rome.

While we're on the topic, Jung also has theories about lucid dreaming. Apparently that is when the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of control over the dream. The object here, however, is not to control a dream, but to control the future of San Pedro, which is truly a gem of a neighborhood. I think I've made that clear already, even if as a good journalist I'm trying not to take sides.

I just wish people wouldn't fight about it so much.

Let's use two people to represent the points of view of two groups spatting over San Pedro Street. We are going to assume - but might be wrong - that the two sides both mean the best for the neighborhood. Marcela wants to preserve everything just as it is; Elisa wants innovation, from places to eat to places to shop. Let's take three locations in the area and compare the plans. I'm suggesting the Parque de Belvís, the cruceiro or cross, and the little praza in front of a little church that doesn't have much traffic as far as worship goes. Wasted space, or so it seems.

One plan to renovate wants to create tourism. 

"Tourists have already started swarming in!" Marcela cries, both angry and frustrated. "We don't need or want them here!" She adds.

Elisa nods, but she doesn't quite comprehend the conflict. Where Marcela sees the rape of place, the other sees development of culture. After all, San Pedro has so much history and people should learn about it. That brings San Pedro and the other streets in its network to life. Plus, the visitors spend money.

"Why bother to brag about our street if it doesn’t bring money in?" argues Elisa, while Marcela insists that history and art are enough in themselves and in a community. They don't need any promoting. More drinkers and smokers come, like what they see, take some pictures with their phones, then leave. No harm done. 

"They clog up the street, are too loud, toss litter everywhere," complains Marcela. "Some of the younger ones vomit all over. It's disgusting."

"That can happen anywhere. There are jerks in every city, on every street." The counter argument.

"What about the camiño franco that's so historic and comes in right along San Pedro? It could be bent out of shape by new construction." (Marcela failed to see the play on words she had just made.) "I mean, all roads lead to the Catedral and they're all famous. We don't want to lose our claim to fame if somebody wants to put up new condominiums." 

"Yes, yes, I know," responded Elisa.They're going to restore the camiño primitivo that goes through Lugo."

"See what I mean? We have to preserve what we have." Marcela felt she was proving her point.

"What about the camiño portugués? Do we have to worry about that, too? Isn't too much history a pain in the you-know-what?" Elisa saw things one way, which was her way. It didn't mean she didn't care about San Pedro.

This is me the student-writing-her-paper talking now:

Older communities against postcapitalist communities: what sustains them is tricky, and any imbalance can be fatal for them. In the same way, a restoration of a piece of art from the sixteenth century can damage the original beyond repair. There had recently been an example in Burgos. A real disaster, but the perpetrator had had good intentions. The Virgin Mary was the worse for the efforts of the would-be restorer.

"Do you know about Archbishop Berenguel de Landoira?" asked Marcela, hoping an argument of the medieval sort would help win over her friend. The Archbishop had had his eye on the lush green fields that are now the Parque de Belvís, behind the Museo do Pobo. He felt they were his, but he didn't consult with the people."

Elisa wasn't overly impressed. Fourteenth century affairs weren't her strong point. She simply wanted her San Pedro to be spiffed up, as she called it. Wanted the peeling skin of its old constructions to be ripped off and replaced. Wanted it to look alive, not forgotten.

"But with what?" inquired Marcela, referring to the spiffing angle. She was a member of the group who feared fast food places and fake conxuro dives that lured tourists in to hear and drink the God-awful brew that was set on fire and chanted over. Kind of like the witches with their cauldron of double, double, toil and trouble. Fun, but again, not at all authentic.

Elisa pointed out how the little church had a great terrace that would provide a view out over the rest of the city. It was already a spot where people stopped as the walked up hill on San Pedro. It shouldn't remain pristine.

"They'll put out a cheap ice cream bar and soon kids will be skate-boarding there. They'll also scare the colony of cats that live nearby." Marecla responded and still still wasn't convinced. 

"We can pass laws to keep certain things from happening," Elisa insisted. She was right, in that laws are supposed to fix things. If they get passed. 

Marcela wasn't through arguing the historical point.

"Around 1330 (Berenguel was in office from 1322 to 1330), the biggest opposition to the theft of the people's lands surfaced. A humble ferreiro, a little ferreiriño, rose up against the powerful religious man, who needed the lands of Belvís as much as he needed a hole in the head."

"A ferreiriño is a little bird, a titmouse. Do you mean to tell me it got the better of the Archbishop?" Elisa was prepared to laugh in her friend's face.

"Um, no, this was a human, and he was a ferreiro who made his living as a blacksmith. He was detained and sentenced to die." Marcela hastened to straighten the misunderstanding out.

"What happened then?" queried Elisa.

"When they were hauling him off, he cried out, 'Ven e váleme, María!' and Mary made him into a saint, thereby saving him. That's why we have the Rúa do Home Santo and a cruceiro dedicated to him. A street and a lovely carved stone cross, in homage to the Holy Man whom the Virgin Mary had saved." 

There hadn't been enormous changes since the twelfth century, that was true. Why ruin that?

"What about the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, the modern art museum designed by the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza?" Elisa had to point that out, and she added that the building also housed the Seminario de Estudos Galegos, which was a very traditional research center. The Seminario had been moved out of its former location and nobody had cared, she added.

"That isn't true," insisted Marcela, who had actually mourned the loss of the original space, filled with rare books, with a rickety spiral staircase in one corner and low-hanging, ponderous oak candelabras where researchers could spread out their materials. Touted as a hinge between the old and the new, the Centro hadn't done that. People had to accept it, though. The exhibits were very interesting, very high quality. Still, the building didn't quite fit.

There was also the church called San Domingos de Bonaval, and according to records, Dominic de Guzmán had made the pilgrimage to Santiago in 1219, then founded the site of worship. It contained the more recent Panteón de Galegos Ilustres, where a number of illustrious writers were buried. People visited those niches. That would mean the interior needed to remain as it always had been. The niches had been a late addition, in the nineteenth century, but that was done and nobody was mean enough to wrench the resting bones and ashes from their tombs.

There was a slight contradiction in Marcela's words, but she chose not to notice.

So some changes are all right, it seems. If you've gotten used to them. Not everything new is evil.

"I'm not saying we should change San Domingos," pouted Elisa. "But we can find ways to bring in more visitors, get some people to write little booklets, sell them."

"The Museo has taken care of that," noted Marcela. Have you seen their publications? Elisa hadn't, just as she hadn't taken notice of the way blacktop had been poured over the old, bumpy path to the park laid out behind the museum. That had irked her friend Marcela no end, however.

"The Convento de Belvís is a perfect spot for a hotel, or a bed-and-breakfast, with a pool, even."

Marcela was aghast at the sacrilegious suggestion for a makeover of a convent founded in the fourteenth century, in 1313 to be precise, by Teresa González. The original structure had been ruined by Monroy, who was another archbishop from away. So perhaps the damage was done. He couldn't destroy the legend of the Virxe do Portal, though, and she is still venerated there. Sacred space.

By now the two friends were tired of going back and forth and were afraid their discussion would become an argument. Neither wanted that. They both loved San Pedro Street, but they were truly stuck in their ways. A fistfight didn't seem to be an option, either. I'm glad, because I'm from the same neighborhood.

CONCLUSION

Well, I had good intentions as far as writing my paper, and then Marcela and Elisa got in the way. Maybe I shouldn't have listened to them, but they were discussing their street, which is my street too, fast and furious. They both knew they were right, and there I was, stuck in the middle with them. You know the song, right?

Clowns to the left of me!

Jokers to the right!

Here I am stuck in the middle with you.

Yes I'm stuck in the middle with you,

And I'm wondering what it is I should do.

It's so hard to keep this smile from my face.

Losing control and running all over the place.

Not that I'm calling my friends clowns and jokers, of course, but this argument is turning into a regueifa. Not the kind that's a round loaf of bread and with a sugar and egg coating. No, this is turning in to regueifa that is a dialectic dispute, improvised and chanted in verse. Regueifas are so much fun, but this one won't help me write my paper, I fear. (I really need a good grade.) This is really good copy. 

Suddenly, I know what to do. I'll convince Elisa and Marcela (not the ones from the film and the book because they were married and got along quite nicely) to organize a public debate. I'll set the rules and they can manage the participants so all those who want to talk - not yell - can do so. I'll continue to smile and run all over the place, without losing control. (If I feel tempted, I'll just hum a few lines of the song.) 

I'll interview everybody I can and record their opinions. They can write my paper for me. So easy.

Except the debate can't be held until next weekend and my paper is due on Monday.

I think I need to change my topic. It was such a good one, though.