LONDON - WITCH HUNTING IN GALICIA

Our friend Jose is an exotic mix of Spanish, Colombian and British. He just got back from his father's native Galicia where he had gone for New Year's. He was meant to do a bar crawl with a pig on a string or something, but it fell through. So instead he tried to hunt down a local witch. This is what happened…

I recently traveled to Galicia, in northwest Spain, where I used to spend my summers as a little kid. I'd always heard stories about meigas, Galician witches, and how they lived in the forests and cast their spells on little kids. Being from London, I didn't really expect these to be true. Nevertheless I set out to find some huts in a nearby field where a supposedly middle-aged and very cagey male-witch of sorts operates. I was told that he was very fond of nailing animal hearts to the ground and walls and lighting everything with hundreds of small candles.

I set out at 7 AM on my walk to the field.

I eventually found the path which led to the witch's field off the main road, where not a single car had passed by. As I turned a corner I found this:

There they were, the four small huts (that's not a wonky lens on my camera, by the way, the fog was thick). For some reason everything I looked at seemed a bit evil, from the roofs of the buildings to the trees and the bushes. It suddenly occurred to me that I was alone, it was 7:20 in the morning, and the mad farmer-turned-witch might butcher me for breakfast. I envisioned my soon-to-be-killer as a toothless bastard wielding a shot gun and a necklace made of ears.

Here are a few more snaps of his witch grotto:

Note the white flag and palm leaf. He had also filled in the gaps around the top of the roofs to stop people from snooping.

So I didn't see the witch, but I did see his lair. Good times.

JOSE