Buffoons of Castro Urdiales

The North of Spain, not in vain considered as a whole as a true Natural Paradise, in which to the immeasurable beauty of its imposing mountains, its deep and ancient forests and its intrepid and rugged coast, we must also add, the mysterious charm of its rich and varied Mythology.

A Mythology, which has reached our days practically intact, thanks to the efforts of compiling meritorious countrymen, such as Constantino Cabal or Aureliano de Llano, who not only traveled a good part of the Cantabrian Coast in the difficult and romantic times of the late nineteenth century , collecting testimonies and legends of live voice narrated by the humble people of the most remote and unknown villages, but also, they collected and classified them for posterity, attending to the nature of the supernatural beings that star them.

Beings and nature, in short, which depending on the characteristics of their action and power over the peoples with whom they shared the environment, could be classified as gods of life and gods of death.

Behold, that between them, they make up a genuine Olympus, a relative, without any doubt, of those other Celtic Olympians of which they are partly heirs and in which, unlike other classical mythologies, they are the magical beings of the Nature who intervenes for or against men, depending, generally, on the respect or aggressiveness that he shows towards them.

Far from the typical Xanas or nymphs of the sources, from the mocking goblins or Diaños or even from the power to flood the crops, inherent in extraordinary beings, such as the stormy Nubero, the people of the coast, as well as the sailors, know, respect and they fear another type of supernatural supernatural being, whom they know, indistinctly as Bramadoiro or Buffoons.

The buffoons or bramadoiros, are natural accidents, chimneys that the erosion of the sea has been forming during thousands of years continuously sculpting the coast - as the Hindu poet, Rabindranath Tagore warned, it is not the man who polishes the pebbles, but the water with its dance and its song- through which the wind and the sea sneak in, producing notable and dangerous geysers, always accompanied by a spectacular roar, a detail for which they are known as jesters.

There is an area in Castro Urdiales, close to Ostende beach, a brand new creation - a cove was used to convert it into a beach in the nineties of the last century - that is prolific in this type of phenomenon, although they are not so spectacular as in the area of ​​Pría de Llanes, in neighboring Asturias, where erosion has made chimneys, completely vertical, very similar to the famous geysers of Yellowstone National Park, in the United States.

But they are enough, I hope, for you to enjoy a small spectacle of natural mythology, which makes you see part of the rich and flowery ancient world, capable of creating poetry of the most common natural phenomena, to the point of turning them into a showy tradition.

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