When the bus stops, Ruth opens her eyes and sees that ‘a crew of screeching hags was milling round it‘. They have arrived in Santiago. Her first impression is that in Compostela ‘strangers were daily meat‘, not like in other Galician towns that accept their ‘strangeness’ with ‘quiet, good-humoured tolerance’. Her father hires a porter to transport their luggage with the idea of a discreet and peaceful entry into the city. But when Ruth is indicating to the porter what her belongings are, a woman appears and snatches a camera from her hands. A police officer was there and turned his back on them and ignored the situation. It is clear that to recover the camera, they will have to hire a woman as well. Ruth says that:
‘When the procession set out, she strode ahead in more than Roman triumph, arrogantly displaying her disproportionate burden and waking the arcaded streets with maudlin singing, while we, in fury and humiliation, brought up the rear. Nobody, fortunately, took much notice even when several boys gleefully joined on, crying, “¡Ingleses! Spik Inglis? One penny, one chilleen!’
And so, in procession, they pass through here. So, let’s move on and talk a little more. Ruth was in Compostela five times, totalling 43 days of stay between 1924 and 1926, and during this time she took over 565 photographs in our city, the vast majority of which have never been displayed. It was the Galician town where she spent most of her time.
In Praza Toural, she captures a woman with a cart and in the Cantón she photographs a woman selling chestnuts with a baby under the arcades. From here, she also photographs the milk women, who she discovers thanks to the bell ringers who wake them up so early that at seven o’clock they meet thirty milk women who come from the villages to sell milk to the maids.
A curiosity, in August 1924, months before Ruth arrived, during the filming of the first film version of La Casa de la Troya, the director of photography, Josep Gaspar i Serra, took excellent photos, including several of these same milk women.
Now let’s move on to the Hotel Suízo, as we have already lost sight of the procession.