‘What’s the problem, Nieves?’
‘Can’t find the right spot. I need a little sun but not too much.’
She came over to explain. ‘Six months ago,’ she told us with a finger dramatically raised, ‘I was bitten by a spider! Just here,’ she added, indicating a point halfway up one thigh. ‘A spider!’ she emphasised, and it sounds even more threatening in Spanish, araña, arr-AN-ya!
‘Poison. I was poisoned!’ She had nearly died from the spider bite, she claimed. No more than a centimetre from death. Her thumb and forefinger indicated a gap remorselessly closing: poof! - out like the flame of a candle.
Ever since then she had been cold from the inside. ‘From the inside! Frozen!’ This is a terrible thing to feel, we agreed, in perfect honesty. It’s one thing to feel a chill, the need for an extra woolly or jacket, and quite another to feel a deep-body cold that warns of something wrong.
Nieves clamped a hand around J’s wrist, and then mine. ‘You see?’ It was cold, no doubt about that. ‘So I need the sun to warm me up,’ she explained, ‘but not too much because it burns. Sol y sombra,’ sun and shade.
‘A little of Lorenzo but not too much!’ she amplified, chuckling.Eh? Lorenzo?
Nieves looked surprised at our puzzlement. ‘Lorenzo! The sun! You don’t know?’
We didn’t know. The sun is called Lorenzo. ‘And the moon is Catalina,’ she added, nodding as though this were obvious. Clearly this needed further investigation, but Nieves was by then heading for a table that had just been vacated, with shade from a sun umbrella but warmth on her back.
Soon afterwards one of our most reliable sources of information passed by with a cheery wave on his way to the office. We lassoed him: ‘Enrique! A little question.’ He paused obediently because he quite enjoys our little questions which rarely rise above the level of Spanish for Dummies. The sun, he confirmed, is called Lorenzo. But no, he didn’t know why, it just is. You might say, for example ‘Como pega Lorenzo hoy!’ which means ‘How Lorenzo beats down today, how strong the sun is!’
And the moon, he added smiling, ‘is called Catalina! As every schoolkid knows.’ Then he broke into song, quite prettily, which translated goes:
The sun is called Lorenzo and the moon is Catalina
Catalina comes by night and Lorenzo comes by day
Lorenzo fell in love with the fair Catalina
And one morning asked if she would marry him…
And so on - it’s not a very exciting story. However, I have since read that the legend behind the song, which seems to have come originally from Asturias in the north of Spain, offers a little more. The problem these two lovers had was that their paths never crossed. Lorenzo, young and strong, worked by day to ensure that people had light to find their way around, while Catalina was a ballerina who danced daintily by night among the stars. When would they ever meet? How could they marry?
Ah, but then they realised - there’s one occasion when their paths cross. Sometimes they are able to snuggle together in the sky, Catalina hiding Lorenzo, and the world discreetly darkens while they share a brief kiss. The solar eclipse.
And so they married, and how lovely Catalina looked in her bride’s veil of twinkling stars!
A nice story and so far it seems to have been a good marriage, they still follow each other around and meet occasionally. The song is looking a bit suspect these days though - why isn’t Lorenzo the ballet dancer and Catalina doing a useful job of work instead of just looking pretty? But please don’t ban it, anyone - children need a little magic in the world, and so do I.
First, the spider. I don’t know of anyone else who’s suffered seriously from a spider bite in La Gomera, there is nothing you’d call venomous, but perhaps Nieves has a particular allergy. Or it just makes a good story.
As for the song - charming as it is, it doesn’t explain why the sun is called Lorenzo. This is probably not worth a lifetime’s research but I did a little digital digging, and one explanation is that San Lorenzo, the Catholic saint, has his special day on the 10th of August, which is often on or near the hottest day of the year in Spain. (It’s true, I checked the tables).
Another explanation is that San Lorenzo was put to death brutally by being roasted on a grill, and it does seem that his name is used to describe a sun that hurts: ‘Como pega / pica / quema / torra!’ – ‘How it beats / stings / burns / roasts!’ Perhaps there’s room for both explanations, as they both fit quite well.
But what about Catalina as the moon? Trickier, but I found one suggestion. In Asturias where the song came from, specifically in the coastal town of Gijón, there is a hill (cerro) called Santa Catalina which overlooks a beach called Playa de San Lorenzo. There you are, job done!
Unless you prefer a more Catholic and painful interpretation. The legend of Santa Catalina says she was a young noblewoman in Alexandria who converted to Christianity and set about trying to convert everyone else, with an unwise degree of success. The emperor Maximinus failed to stop her and eventually condemned her to execution on a big wheel (you don’t want to know how that works). However, instead of killing her the wheel broke into little pieces - each one an arc, the shape of a crescent moon. This stretches things a bit far for me, but who knows?
Catalina is, by the way, the patron saint of young women, especially students. Who may perhaps study alone by night, with a bright moon shining through the window to keep them company…
Okay, I’ll stop.
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