«After a feast of music in Cebrero, Eladio and I became like blood brothers and weplodded on towards our next halting place, Triacastela, in high glee. Eladio was a fount ofknowledge and as we walked he rambled on, describing the life in the villages and Galiciancountryside. I was fascinated by his strange mixture of melancholy and sly humour. Inappearance he was a grotesque vagabond, for he had at least two weeks of beard on hisswarthy face, his black hair with grayish streaks was tousled and he had a cast in one eye.He was long and lanky in figure, and, being double-jointed, he would twist his arms and legsinto queer contortions. His massive head seemed too big for his thin scrawny wrinkled neck,which was so elastic that when he was downcast it nestled between his shoulders, but whenhe was excited it protruded inquiringly. He never walked but pranced spasmodically like adiminutive camel, making it well nigh impossible for me to keep up with him, but when wesat down he would wriggle, twist his legs curl his neck like a goose, pop his bushy eyebrowsup and down and stutter before speaking. Like the Galician climate he was very variable intemperament and loved to fly off at a tangent from one subject to another, as though in aperpetual monologue intérieur.»

(Walter Starkie, The Road to Santiago, London: John Murray, 1957, p. 293)