It is not a specific species, but an order of agnathous fish, that is, without jaws; Therefore, the name lamprey includes about 40 species in the world. But despite being a jawless fish, the lamprey presents itself with fearsome teeth and a round, suction-shaped mouth that clings to its prey, scratching its flesh and sucking its blood as if it were a vampire. sweet water. They are the origin of vertebrates and Alvaro Cunqueiro wanted to see the empanada of the Glory Portico of the Santiago Cathedral full of lampreys.
Their snack goes back centuries and Pliny the Elder tells us in his Natural History how “Gaius Hirius lent six thousand lampreys from his pool, exclusively for Caesar's triumphal meals, which he would neither sell nor exchange for other goods.” hinting at the exquisiteness of his succulent blood flesh; a delicatessen
However, seeing a lamprey for the first time in its natural habitat can cause our neural networks to temporarily break down in the face of a creature as old as the world. Add to that a poorly tempered stomach and you'll find it difficult to sit down and eat a plate of lamprey without gagging. But let's go back to the time of Pliny, because in the riverbed of the Miño the Romans built a kind of block trap to trap the fish.
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Lampreys were caught in such fisheries and brought to Rome in ships to please even the most discerning palate. There are legends that speak of lamprey ponds in which slaves were punished by submerging them alive, and Torrente Ballester, in the saga/fugue of JB, presents us with the Baralla lampreys, whose quality depended on the number of people, who drowned in the above-mentioned pond. Flow.
Following the tradition of the time, lamprey fishing in the Miño has become a ritual. Now, around this time, the lampreys are heading up the Miño to spawn. They lay their eggs for a little over a month and then die. The life cycle of these ancient fish is strange, since two weeks after spawning, the larvae or ammocoetes are born, which spend about five years under the river soil before reaching the sea. They will live in saltwater for a few more years before returning to the river to spawn. During their time in the sea, they live by parasitizing other fish.
The lamprey is one of the few surviving prehistoric remains, an animal that migrates up the rivers to follow the ancestral rite of life and death, a mythological creature that is part of Galician folklore and, according to Álvaro Cunqueiro, “brings its flesh with it”. the cinnamon of the underwater forests, and perhaps from the taste of the lamprey we know the taste of the kisses of mermaids.”
The stone axe It is a section in which Montero GlezWith a penchant for prose, he makes his special attack on scientific reality to show that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.
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