Galicia is old Celtic country, with druid customs. Such as cooking up firebrew or queimada in the middle of the night, throwing in both spices and secret ingredients as well as empowering it with a druid spell.

The incantation that gives queimada its power is impressive and nearly impossible to remember word-for-word: a seemingly endless litany of evocations directed at spirits, crows, witches, demons, Satan, and even the scent of the dead and “the mutilated bodies of the indecent ones”. Fortunately the aim is not to conjure up these evil forces but to banish them away as the boozy brew is consumed in the proper way.

For sure, Galicians are no sissies.(Parador Santo Estevo, Galicia, Spain; September 2019)