Una fontera entre el valor y el miedo por un bocado de mar

August 12, 2014 10:22 AM

Percebeiros

'Percebeiros', guerreros entre el valor y el miedo

Son héroes sin saberlo, de esos que arriesgan a diario su vida por un exquisito bocado de mar. Un modo de vida sin tregua en un rincón de la costa atlántica gallega donde a diario libran su particular batalla contra la saña milenaria de las olas. Son los percebeiros, esos guerreros anónimos a los que un día el periodista David Beriain y el guionista Fernando Ureña decidieron dedicarles un fiel retrato. El resultado es 'Percebeiros', un cortometraje documental que narra el trabajo de Serxo Ces en la agreste costa de Cedeira y que acaba de ser preseleccionado para los premios Goya.

Hijos del Oceano - Galicia. Los Percebeiros

'Soy un percebeiro honrado, una especie en vías de extinción'

posted by the man of twists and turns (5 comments total)

The Life Of A Percebeiro, and the documentary Sea Bites, about the Galician fishermen who take the gooseneck (or is it geese?) barnacles.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:25 AM on August 12, 2014

Huh. That "Galician fishermen" video is weirdly similar to those early C20th "documentaries" like Nanook of the North that mixed documentary footage with staged action performed by the actual documentary subjects. I mean, the dialogue between the two fishermen when they get to the coast is clearly "performed" for the cameras--and I'm not sure how much of the actual "action" scenes isn't being "performed" too. Not that the waves they're dodging aren't real, and so forth, but there is clearly quite a lot of work here setting up multiple angles of coverage so that we can see them at work from all directions without seeing any cameramen in the background of any of the shots. This is no "let's just be a fly on the wall and no interfere in their actual practice" kind of filming. I have some real ethical concerns about that approach.

(And also, as so often with these kinds of documentaries, while you're being invited to marvel at the daring and courage of the people being captured on video you can't help thinking how much more daring and courageous the people operating the camera have to be.)
posted by yoink at 10:36 AM on August 12, 2014

Note that there are also percebeiras, even grannies.
posted by sukeban at 10:58 AM on August 12, 2014

All that's needed now is a trend-piece from the New York Times. Ah, here's one (from 2001).

(I love percebes. And also the old joke "we sell understands". (Percebe = understand in Portuguese.)
posted by chavenet at 11:01 AM on August 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

And I'm going to translate this paragraph from the "grannies" link:

En esta pequeña localidad de A Costa da Morte famosa por su percebe del Roncudo, "el mejor del mundo", según reza un cartel a la entrada de la villa, la peliaguda y arriesgada recogida de este selecto crustáceo con uña es cosa de mujer. Mujeres lo son 40 de los 45 percebeiros con que cuenta la cofradía. La gran mayoría son ya abuelas. Tres cuartas partes superaron el medio siglo de vida. Diez son sexagenarias. Y anhelan jubilarse, dar paso a los jóvenes, "renovar como la sangre" una profesión que, afirman, es "emergente" y pararía la hemorragia de población, obligada a emigrar por falta de alternativas.

In this small village of the Costa da Morte famous for their Roncudo barnacles, "the best in the world" as read on a placard at the entrance of the town, the and risky harvesting of this exquisite crustacean is a woman's work. Women make 40 of the 45 percebeiros in the cofradía [fishermen's guild]. Most of them are already grandmothers. Three out of four are over fifty years old. Ten are sexagenaries. And they long for retirement, to let young people take their place, "renovate like the blood" an occupation that, they say, it's "emergent" and would stop the population drain, pushed to emigrate because of a lack of alternatives.

posted by sukeban at 11:06 AM on August 12, 2014