COAST

BY LUIS BUSTOS ACCORDING TO NACHO CARRETERO

Part One THE LORDS OF SMOKE

While on the Coast of Death, presumably, ships were looted, on the blurred border between Spain and Portugal, known as the dry streak, a huge amount of black market merchandise was sneaking in.

But let’s back up to understand the phenomenon. The “how’s” and “why’s.”

Santiago, Meaus and Rubias were the three villages that made up the “Couto Mixto," a triangle lost between mountains and close to the border.

Food, medicine and metals moved through there with the complicity of the civil guard and the villagers.

For centuries, this piece of land remained almost an autonomous territory. A permeable geopolitical limbo that would last until the end of the Spanish Civil War.

Smuggling was a respected and prestigious activity…

To such an extent that it even minted its own currency.