The complicated sometimes dresses in simplicity; of coincidences that make what was forgotten one day remembered today. This article is proof of this, proof that what is not written disappears forever; the fire of oblivion does not take prisoners. Hence the importance that the white of the paper is stained with thoughts and traces of ink; so that everything that is insignificant for many, has a soul and oozes past all four sides for others.
The Regiment of Death (…) Its name already indicates the devastating end suffered by those who enlisted under its banner; but what was at stake was freedom, to be free from French domination or die: Victory or Death their motto! The history of its flag is what gives life to this article, written in the lands of the maragatería on the Camino de Santiago towards the lands of Bierzo (León); and it is that the Death Regiment of Pontevedra, ran some luck here, on the ascent to Fuencebadón, retreating, fleeing from the power of the French army, and it is that, many of its brave men left their bones along with other defenders of freedom in these parts, yes, without first dying killing; the Iron Cross, emblem of the Camino de Santiago, with its stones piled up for centuries by so many pilgrims, was a silent witness to their deeds.
The Galician Regiment was created between February and March 1809, during the French invasion of Galicia, by Captain Francisco Colombo. He recounts in a letter to the Marqués de la Romana, that, in the company of Colonel Morillo, they collected two old flags (from the time of King Fernando VI) from the Pontevedra City Council, which once belonged to the Provincial Regiment of the city; simple flags with the Cross of San Andrés and with the coat of arms of Pontevedra and its embroidered name; one of them will become, from that moment, the ensign of the Regiment of Death.
The restlessness of many, the stubbornness of others and the nostalgia of all, made us wonder what happened to the flags? What happened to them after the war? Reenactors, historians and researchers got down to work to answer the big question; Arsenio García Fuertes, Manuel Ruibal, Luis Sorando (President of the ANE) locate the flags, well guarded and preserved in a convent in Santiago de Compostela, after they traveled there from another convent in the city of Pontevedra; Captain Colombo and Colonel Morillo, left the flags to the nuns (at the end of the war in 1814) with the request that they guard them, and pray for the soldiers who fell under their shadow during the fight against the French enemy and many Spanish traitors .
That day, those present saw how the nuns, with care and affection, discovered the Galician heroic ensign; old age also deteriorates the beauty of the inert, the fabric suffers from years; and small sparks of material, detached from the original piece, falling to the ground. They were collected one by one, with the trembling fingertip of someone who knows the value of the old, and kept in a small red envelope.
Faced with the illusion of the discovery, new friends of the historical joined a new project: Make an exact reproduction of the flag of the Regiment of Death: Association of Galician Reenactors, with Antonio (Tucho) at the head, the Argentine historian Horacio Vázquez Rivarola, and a famous artisan from Madrid, also a recreator, Celestino, who worked on the copy with care and rigor. These were added to the previous ones, forming the perfect melting pot for the success of the company.
Thanks to the selfless work of so many vicars of History and a job well done, today we have seen the flag of the Galician and Pontevedra Regiment of Victory or Death fly. Two hundred and fourteen years later, among frozen snow on the road that leads to the apostle; Reenactors from Galicia, Volunteers from León, Shooters from Castilla, ARCHA (Principality of Asturias), Arrieros Maragatos from Astorga… are living witnesses of the moment; insignificant, oblivious to the LIKE of social networks, without expecting anything in return, but breathing and forever photographing on their retinas the inexorable passage of history.
And I, this one who writes to you, who paints here; the same as so many: Nothing, one more spring in the wheel of destiny. Of course, a great lover of Galician poetesses, I do not close this without the words of her, of my Sofía Casanova, who goes so well with these pitiful texts of all times:
“And those thousand remains that the earth keeps/footprints are that through the ages/remember the greatness of the peoples/freedom, the mocked homeland/the heroes that were for their death/the heroes that were for their lives ”.
* Politologist and researcher
#Regiment #Death
