Paloma is visiting Galicia for the first time in 2016 with the desire to get in touch with her Galician ancestral roots. The discovery of the land of her ancestors came about through the investigation of several documents from the beginning of the 20th century, just pieces of the puzzle that started a long journey.

 

Fragments of memories that were kept in the family archive of her grandmother Joana Ares Arias, who in Brazil was called Joana Prieto Ayres due to a succession of confusions in the registry offices and the storms in the life of Galician immigrant Genoveva Gallego Ares, Paloma's maternal great-grandmother, opened the access portals to a very powerful ancestral poetic magma. The original documents are fully and completely preserved in the Archivo Provençal de Ourense.

 

The author's searches and discoveries take place through a series of surreal and synchronic encounters, and why not say, mystical? "eu non creo en meigas, mais habelas hainas"; that led her to the reunion of memories and to the stone house where her Galician great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents lived in the town of Florderrey das Portas Abertas and das pedras livres, a place where Paloma is studying possibilities and partnerships to transform it into a Cultural Center. 

 

As a sequence of this first trip Paloma started a creative process that she baptized "Trago Longo", which includes the production and launch of a book written in Galician, the production of an audiovisual series with elements in Galician and Brazilian Portuguese, etc. 

 

From the poetic connection of the speeches of sui generis characters that she met and got to know along the way and through them unraveling the mysteries that impregnated the subjectivity of four generations of her family, Paloma has since then been on a journey of past, present and future connection and intends to develop cultural and artistic bridges between the two countries.

 

   To be continued...

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