The Last Queimada at O Cachivache

It’s been five years since the Covid-19 pandemic upended our lives and sent the world spiraling. I was in Spain at the time, riding out a lockdown far from my family and most of my friends. A month earlier, in February 2020, my favorite bar in A Coruña closed, preceding what—though we didn’t know at the time—would be a wave of countless other closures. Luckily, we had the chance to give it a proper send-off. Later, living in Rioja and riding trains back and forth from the school where I taught English, I had a lot of time to reflect. I wrote this tribute to Cachivache then, and five years on from that crazy time it feels like a good time to send it out into the world.

The lights go out and it’s time to begin. A crackle of human electricity hums around, an anticipatory murmur fills the air, and we turn towards the action. We’re in a bar called O Cachivache, on Calle Orzan in the coastal Spanish city of A Coruña, and tonight we’ll go home with our souls squeaky clean—something you can’t always say after a night out. It's February 2020, and the last time this bar will witness the queimada, a Galician ritual in which a bowl of alcohol is lit on fire, chanted over with a magic spell, and eventually drunk with the aim of purifying the souls of those present and liberating them from evil.

Warding off witches with flaming liquor: if it sounds pretty metal, that’s because it is.

A square wooden plank, an enormous three-legged ceramic bowl, and a green glass demijohn reflecting the lights that illuminate the bottles behind it all sit on top of the long wooden bar. People have continued chatting—the murmur was short-lived and has now become more of a roar—and they jostle for the position with the best view. Music comes over the speakers, rhythmic metallic clanging over a background of synth strings. Then a woman’s voice begins to soar, chanting and keening like an ancient priestess. As the music builds and the drumming returns, the preparations begin for the ceremony we’ve all come here to watch.

 Behind the bar is Miguel, a Galician whose shock of red hair betrays the Celtic roots supposedly hidden around every corner of this part of northern Spain. He moves with the experience gained over eighteen years of owning this place, deftly weaving back and forth in the narrow space and avoiding the other two bartenders doling out beers and short glasses of thick, black licor café. He sets two plates next to the ceramic bowl, one of them filled with sugar and the other with coffee beans and a couple of lemon peels. They’re the key ingredients of the queimada, along with what Miguel is now pouring into the bowl from the demijohn. It’s aguardiente, “fire-water,” which is more than appropriate given the pyrotechnic nature of the ritual he’s about to perform. 

Popular stories attribute the origins of the queimada to the Celts, but history begs to differ. Although medicinal consumption of aguardiente has a long history in Galicia, technology of distilling wasn’t introduced until the 12th or 13th century. Similarly, the sugar and coffee beans used to make the queimada wouldn’t have been available to your friendly neighborhood druid, since they both arrived from Africa and Spanish colonies in the Americas. 

That doesn’t mean what we’re witnessing tonight is any less authentic, though. It may not be Celtic, but it’s Galician to its core, wrapped up in a history of emigration unique to this part of Spain. Here, they say that there’s even a Galician on the moon, making light of the fact that famine and crushing poverty drove huge numbers of Galicians to leave Spain for the United States or Latin America during the 19th and 20th centuries —so many that in Argentina, the slang term for anyone from Spain is “gallego.” The first queimadas were performed by these Galicians outside Galicia, who decided to end their parties with a theatrical flair and hold onto their roots as best they could by resurrecting old beliefs in witches and other evil creatures and making up a spell to recite over their boiling booze. The emigrant’s longing to return is such an integral part of Galician identity that the Galician language even has a word for the ache in your heart you get when you miss Galicia: morriña. It makes sense then that emigrants would be the first to get together and drink aguardiente, set it on fire, and chant an incantation in the Galician language. It’s one hell of a cure for homesickness, as I’ve found out myself.

But tonight we’re feeling a different kind of morriña, an anticipatory nostalgia for O Cachivache and the many nights of queimada it’s hosted over the years. Miguel has decided to close the bar and focus on his other business, managing country houses in rural Galicia. We don’t know it yet, but just one month from now Spain will enter one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe, forcing the closure of countless other bars. Luckily, tonight we have the chance to say goodbye to this one in the way it deserves. 

On with the ritual.

Miguel pours the sugar into the aguardiente and mixes it with a long-handled ceramic ladle, murmuring a silent prayer—or perhaps an incantation—as he does. He fills the ladle with the aguardiente-sugar mixture and passes it over a lit candle until the alcohol ignites, then lowers it to the bowl, sending flames rippling across the surface of the liquid. 

—“Eeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii lume!!”

 Lume. Fire. Illuminated by the flames shooting up from the bowl, Miguel and his red hair seem like the embodiment of the queimada itself, as if he’s willing the ritual into being with his raspy voice. He shouts and the other bartenders begin to play the pandeireta, a traditional type of tambourine. He shouts again,

—“LUME!” and we all echo in response, 

—“LUME!” 

The tambourines continue and Miguel begins singing as he scoops up the liquid flame with the ladle and raises it high above his head, letting it cascade back down into the bowl. The people standing closest to him step back as droplets of fire splash over the sides and onto the wooden plank. He ducks behind the bar and emerges with a cowbell, which he rings to gradually bring the bar to silence again, giving it one more shake for good measure and comedic effect. The only noises now are the voices drifting in from the patio in the back. 

—“Queridos hermanos!” he begins. “Brothers and sisters!” 

The echoes of a priest inviting his congregation to prayer aren’t an accident. Although the queimada is at its heart a spectacle for Miguel’s customers and whatever lucky tourist might happen to come wandering through the door, he performs it with a quasi-religious gravity, mixed with a healthy dose of showmanship. 

—“Queridos hermanos,” he says again, “welcome to the hottest night in town!” 

The joke yields a few appreciative chuckles and a couple groans, but Miguel is just hitting his stride.

—“The queimada is a ritual from Galicia with the purpose of cleaning and purifying the soul,” he intones solemnly. “The body, however, is a little fucked,” he continues without missing a beat. This time we all respond with laughter.

—“In fact, this is why experts recommend moderating your alcohol consumption…” 

He pauses.

—“But I want you to know that only applies if you’re drinking in other bars.” 

More laughs. He goes on to explain his version of queimada history, beginning with the curandeiras, wise women who practiced medicine in rural Galicia. He tells us that in ancient times they prescribed a potion made from aguardiente as a remedy for tumors of the liver.

—“Sure enough, queridos hermanos, each time this potion was drunk, the tumor disappeared!”

Another dramatic pause.

—“I mean, granted, so did the liver, but who’s counting, eh?” 

Amid more laughter (and groans), he adds the other ingredients, explaining the purpose of each one as he goes. He points out that one of the peculiarities of the conxuro, or spell, that he is about to recite, is that it names the sign of the cross. How is it that a pagan ritual could use the sign of the cross? he asks. The answer, of course, is that the ever-cautious Galicians are always a little bit on both sides of things. That’s why, he says, the little boy goes to his mother and says, “mamá, God is good! But… the devil isn’t so bad either!”

The queimada is about union, and it’s also about being a little bit on both sides of things. It’s a symbol of Galician culture and a tourist spectacle, of emigration and the longing to return. Pagan and Christian. Body and soul. Fire and water. And tonight, it’s the bridge between old and new. The bar is closing. Uncharted territory lies ahead. We have one foot in the past and one in the future. So what better send-off to give this bar than the very thing that has formed its identity since it opened?

Finally, the liquor has been burning for almost ten minutes and it’s time for the conxuro, the moment in which Miguel will invoke the forces of nature and the saints in order to give us luck, happiness, love—virility, as he slyly reminds us—and of course, a healthy buzz. He tells us that the queimada requires the participation of everyone present. In order for evil to leave our bodies, we need to imitate the call of the owl. Everyone obliges, filling the bar with a collective “Whoooooooo.” But there’s one last step before the recitation of the conxuro. Gonzalo, one of the other bartenders, has gone behind the bar and brings out what looks like an entire haystack. It’s a coroxa, a traditional Galician suit made of straw, with a triangular cloak that closes around the front of the wearer and a peaked cap to keep out the rain. Miguel puts it on and turns to address the crowd again.

—“Queridos hermanos!”

He proclaims that this being a pagan ritual, we need to add a sacrifice. Something flammable. In this case, if the straw catches fire, so does he. According to ancient traditions, if this happens it means the queimada won’t be able to purify us, so it’s important that neither he nor the straw go up in smoke. He begins to chant in Galician over the bowl of flames.

—“Lume lumiña, que verde camiña da fraga á lareira, faise lumeira. Lume de quentura; para a nosa fartura, lume benzoada, que arrodea á queimada.”

We all respond with a rousing “Whoooooooo.” He continues his spell, punctuated by enthusiastic hooting at the end of each couplet. The flames dance and leap out of the bowl as he raises the ladle high above his head, sending rivulets of fire tumbling back down. The liquid flame whooshes and pops, kicking off a heatwave that radiates to the edges of the crowd. The poetry of the conxuro becomes amplified by Miguel’s voice, which now has another dimension to it, as if he himself has become possessed by the spirit of the ritual.

At the end, he always invokes the saints and the ancient Galician king Breogan.

—“Polo San Roque, can e palitroque, polo San Silvestre, de pao de cipestre, polo San Andrés, polo Santiago, polo rei, o rei Breogan…” 

And this time, he adds one more invocation: the bar itself, our Cachivache, taking a look around as he does.

 —“And for you, Cachivache…queimada ti fago...queimada…ti…es!"

For a millisecond, silence falls and I swear I can hear an intake of breath from everyone in the room.  And suddenly, an eruption of screams and the wild applause of those who know what they are about to lose. They play the pandeiretas. We drink the last queimada.

For me, tonight is the culmination of my own union with a place that’s not my homeland, but has become the place where my heart lies. Anyone who walked into this bar on a humid Thursday night two years ago would have seen a gangly American who had been in a foreign city exactly two days, hearing the Galician language for the first time and standing hypnotized by the queimada—although the licor café consumed that night might have had something to do with it. I was hooked. But besides giving me a place to go on Thursday nights, O Cachivache quickly became my first lesson in the Galician habit of existing on both sides of things. I was now calling two places home, but in this bar, coming to the queimada every Thursday, I began to feel a sense of belonging. Just like the Galician emigrants all those years ago, my homesickness slowly slipped away. Through O Cachivache, I learned very quickly that Spain is a country of bars. I think that deep within the Spanish Constitution there must be a law that every inhabitant must have his own local—I staked my claim after just two days in Galicia. After countless Thursday nights in this bar I took my first teetering steps with the Galician language, proudly informing Miguel that I would return "a semana que ven." To me, O Cachivache was much more than some typical neighborhood bar. It was the beginning of my love affair with the Galician language and culture—a love that didn’t die when the bar closed, but one that I’ll carry inside me forever. 

Galician writer Xosé Posada said that “the most important aspect of a queimada is to recite it from the heart… and always with emotion, because our emotions are the heat that the grateful queimada collects, concentrates, and returns to us when we partake in it… If joy and sadness are within each one of us, we can put everything we have into the queimada and it will give us back even more… What more perfect communication can there be between men!

Our collective experience and feelings, forged in the fire and returned to us to be toasted to and passed around. An emotional elixir that once more becomes part of our very essence as soon as it passes our lips. My sadness is yours; your joy is mine. We can exist on both sides of things. Maybe we understand each other a little bit better. And maybe a kid from New York can cross the Atlantic and find home.

Later, when everyone has a drink and people start trickling out to continue their night somewhere else, I see Miguel leaning on the bar. I thank him for everything, take one last look around this place that holds so many memories, and step out into the February night with a clean soul and a happy heart.