Oral History Interview - Anxo Baz (A Guarda)

This oral-history interview with Anxo Baz documents personal and communal relationships between inhabitants of A Guarda and Monte Santa Trega across the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The interview addresses childhood experiences growing up in the port environment, transformations in urban life and public space, and the continuing centrality of Monte Santa Trega as a symbolic landscape of identity. Baz reflects on the role of the mountain as a maritime landmark for fishing families, its ritual importance in the Romaría de Santa Trega and Festas do Monte, and the intergenerational transmission of devotional practices, including promises (promesas), bandas de cruces, and participation in processions. The interview also explores the relationship between language and festivity, the historical marginalization of Galician in schooling, and the persistence of Galician as a ritual and musical language during communal celebrations. Additional themes include marriage at the Santa Trega chapel, family devotion to the Virxe do Carme and Santa Trega, memories of maritime religious practices, and the political-symbolic visibility of Monte Santa Trega in contemporary public actions.