In the O Barqueiro library in Mañón, paper envelopes of "fabas do país" bean seeds lie on the table — small, with a light brown speckle, gathered last summer. The woman handing them over remembers how her mother used to select the largest pods for precisely this variety, because only it yields a dense, almost nutty flavour after a long, slow simmer.
Galicia — a land of small fields, acidic soils and frequent rain — has preserved its varieties for centuries thanks precisely to such hands. The climate here does not allow mass hybrids to open up the way local ones do: cool summers and humid air make the seeds more resistant to fungi, and the flavour richer. "Fabas do país" or local peppers are not replicated in other regions, because their adaptation to specific slopes and winds was passed down from generation to generation.
Three women stand behind the Tecelás da Terra project: Tania Merelas Iglesias from Avezar and Rafaela Teijeiro Veiga with Noelia Darriba García from the AtalaiAS cooperative. They came from social pedagogy and ecofeminism, but saw in seeds a way to restore to the women of rural Galicia their historical role as keepers of knowledge. The project received the Luisa Villalta award in 2025 and began opening its first seed libraries precisely in Mañón, Cedeira and Betanzos.
In these libraries you do not borrow books — you borrow seeds. A person takes away an envelope, plants it on their plot and in autumn returns part of the harvest. In this way not only varieties are preserved, but also the connection between people and the land that industrial agriculture is gradually tearing apart. Already more than thirty local species are in circulation, including rare beans and aromatic herbs that are disappearing because of the outflow of young people from the villages.
Today the project fights several threats at once: the spread of transgenic crops, the loss of old knowledge and climatic shifts that are changing the usual sowing cycles. The women hold "circles of sowers" — meetings where they share not only seeds but also care techniques that are not written down in any textbook. This is not nostalgia but a practical way to strengthen the food sovereignty of a small territory.
The first libraries are already operating in the municipal libraries of O Barqueiro, Cedeira and Betanzos. You can come without a membership card: it is enough to bring your own seeds or simply listen to local women tell the story of each envelope. The best time is spring, when the exchange begins before the new season.
Each such envelope holds not merely the possibility of growing a vegetable, but a whole chain of flavours and memories that will disappear if the passing of seeds from hand to hand is broken.
