When I came to Spain for the first time in 1972, I expected to see a lot of gypsy guitar players and dark-haired women dancing the flamenco. Nothing that I had read beforehand, not even Michener's Iberia, could convince me otherwise. So imagine my surprise when I got to Galicia and found a bunch of pale-faced folks, many of them blond or red-headed. Okay, got the picture so far? Good. Now imagine my surprise when I heard those people playing gaitas e tambores (Galician for ' bagpipes and drums ' ).

I soon found out that Galicia is one of Europe's areas with Celtic backgrounds that date back to before the Romans occupied them. And they still celebrate their Celtic heritage every year in Ortigueira, a small Galician coastal town, where Celts from Ireland, the British Isles, French Brittany, among others, gather to hold a Celtic music festival.

The players shown above are from a small village near us named San Pantaleón, which has a Galician music school. They were playing at this year's "county fair" in Paderne, a few miles from Ambroa. They're part of the larger Celtic music group that plays every year at the Paderne "County Fair."