9 Signs You Were Born and Raised in Galicia

3. Your school took you to the Domus Museum in A Coruña as a child, and you were traumatized by the video of a woman in labor.

You were an innocent child when you got there, a happy 8-year-old in a fun museum where you were allowed (even encouraged!) to touch things and make experiments. You found a closed booth where a video was being played. You went inside and…blood everywhere! Clearly the film is responsible for Galicia’s low birth rates.

4. You have a love-hate relationship with the rain.

It works like this: it rains, you complain. Non-stop, to infinity. But then it stops. The first rain-free week you are absolutely happy. The second week you notice your skin is getting dry. The third week you start fearing a drought. The fourth week you think global warming apocalypse is finally here, and Galicia will be a desert in three months. (All your worries disappear the moment it starts raining again, and you go back to hating the rain and longing for the sun.)

5. You can’t stand temperatures above 35ºC.

You spend the winter complaining about how cold it is, dreaming of warm weather, yearning for a time when you’ll be able to step outside in just a T-shirt and shorts…and then those two days a year in which temperatures rise above 35ºC (that is, they get to 36ºC), you can’t sleep and barely move. Unless you are from Ourense, of course. Then you’re used to it.

6. You’ve taken part in a discussion about why people from A Coruña are called “Turks” (and have your own theory about it).

You learned this at school (from your classmates, not the teachers!): People from Vigo are Portuguese, those from Coruña are Turks. The first part is easy to understand. The second is a bit more cryptic. Turkish pirates, TourCoruña buses, Franco…there are thousands of theories and you’ve discussed all of them.

7. Ever since your favorite weatherman Pemán retired, you don’t know who to trust for the weather forecast.

You wander hopelessly from Meteogalicia to Windguru (if you live on the coast), visit 4Gotas and even try TV’s La Primera, but you think Martiño is not the same since he got rid of his ponytail. You end up making your own forecast by looking at the sky. Sometimes you get it right.

8. You think TV program Luar is where music careers go to die.

Has your music career seen better days? Your coplas have stopped selling out in bull rings? Xosé Ramón Gayoso will welcome you and give you a second chance, helping you to reach the hearts of all Galician grannies. Being on the show may announce the death of your music career, but ironically, it’ll also help relaunch it. That’s the Luar guarantee: One performance on the show, and you’ll be requested to play in every village in Galicia during the summer!

9. You just can’t have the last olive.

Or the last empanada bite. Or the last croqueta. Galician shame is a big cliché, sure, but it’s also a truism. It’s not that we’ve been taught that being the one to finish the shared tapa is bad manners, it’s just that we’re simply unable to do it. If there’s someone who’s not from Galicia in the group, he will be forced to have that last olive. Even if he doesn’t like it.