One Million Cows (104 pages) is a book of eighteen short stories which won the Spanish Critics’ Prize in 1989. It is considered a foundational work with an important influence on the direction taken by modern Galician literature.

         In ‘First Love’, two young people meet in a village in Galicia. The younger of the two plans to emigrate to Australia. He is full of plans and has a watch that tells the time in Tokyo, London and New York. The other is slightly older. She was in Barcelona, where things were pretty difficult. She has a daughter and invites the other in to meet her with a painful smile.

         In ‘My Cousin, the Gigantic Robot’, the narrator has a cousin who is much older than him and is said to be a child his aunt had out of wedlock. The narrator is convinced this cousin, Dombodán, is a kind of robot that Time has turned into a human. When riding on his back in order to pick cherries, he tries pulling on his ears in order to see if some multi-coloured cables come out. When he discovers some high-voltage batteries in the dresser, he is convinced these must be used to power his cousin. Dombodán is not allowed to eat normal food, such as fried eggs or pork, and is given an oily liquid at the end of each meal, which the narrator believes must be to oil all his circuits. Dombodán never speaks, although apparently one day he managed to say ‘wee-wee’. And yet he is the one chosen by their grandfather, who is deaf, to listen to his stories. The narrator is surprised one night to see how his aunt undresses Dombodán in bed and, herself naked, begins to stroke him. In September, they return to the city and Dombodán is left. In ‘The Solitary Sailor’, there is a storm outside the Singapore bar. The barman argues in the kitchen and then smacks his child on the head for climbing on to the counter, where he has told a solitary sailor how brave he is and what nests he has raided. The barman switches on the television, which shows oriental peasants being chased by soldiers. The colour on the screen disappears until the barman lifts his child up to the television in order to repair it. When the football results come on, the barman tries to inform the sailor how he used to play football pretty well. He tries to speak to him using simple language, but the sailor appears not to understand. They watch news about an outdoor art exhibition and then about a shipwreck. One of the victims was a redhead identical to the sailor. The barman asks him if he is dead. The sailor nods, and the barman informs his son.

         In ‘A Match with the Irishman’, the narrator is new to the sea and is confined to his bunk, where he dreams he is going to be attacked by a shark and takes comfort from a calendar with a picture of a cow. The fishing vessel has an English captain, five Irish crew and two Galicians, apart from the narrator. One of the Galicians is responsible for the radar and retires to his cabin to pray. Another Galician, the cook, explains that he prays because he’s a Protestant. The narrator shares his cabin with one of the Irishmen. They play a game of dice. The Galician loses everything he has. The Irishman suggests he bets the cow on the calendar and the Galician manages to win everything back. At this point, he is able to return to deck and help with the fishing. In ‘The Lame Horse’s Road’, the narrator takes a shortcut over the mountains next to Muros. Once, he was stopped by a herd of horses, which refused to move until a black stallion appeared from out of the pines and ordered them on. The stallion was lame. On the day of the story, the narrator’s car is behind a car with a foreign number-plate. They are being held back by a funeral procession. A member of the procession gets in the narrator’s car when it starts to rain and curses the local priest for refusing to bury the young man in the coffin because he committed suicide. They are taking him to the next parish. There, the priest initially doesn’t want to perform the funeral service either, but relents, although he accuses them all of living in sin. The narrator is appalled by the priest’s attitude, but the old man from before ignores his comments and tells him to carry on his way. He then limps off. In ‘One of Those Guys Who Come from Far Away’, Marga brings a new boyfriend to the party. The others are amazed. His name is Dombodán, he is huge and he rarely speaks. They leave the bar and go to the holiday home of the parents of one of them, Raúl. There, they drink champagne, smoke hashish and snort cocaine. When Dombodán falls asleep, they drop a pet snake on him and he wakes up with a scream. Raúl has some white mice, but, when one of them bites him, he shoots it with a revolver. He and Marga go to bed together. Dombodán doesn’t react and Rita confesses how she had an abortion. They go down to the beach for a game of Russian roulette. Dombodán is the last to take the revolver, but there was never a bullet in the chamber. Dombodán walks away from the group in disgust.

         In ‘The Englishman’, the main character is a boisterous young man without money who goes hunting on the local marshes. He emigrates to England. On his return to Galicia, he orders eggs and ham for breakfast and introduces the locals to golf. He jokes about one day there being a golf course in their town. With the money he’s earned in England, he goes into business, buying the local fish, which he transports to the capital, opening a butcher’s, a café with bright lights, a disco, a hotel and restaurant, apartments, until the day he is finally able to inaugurate a golf course. He knows the grass will always remain green because the golf course is built on top of the marshes where he used to hunt as a penniless youngster. In ‘Leave Nothing Behind’, a sales rep bumps into an old friend at the airport, who is amazed to hear he has a child. There is something beautiful, but at the same time terrible, about bringing a child into the world, the friend says. The sales rep refuses to buy his son any toy weapons, since he is still a member of Greenpeace, and so, in the end, he opts for a plastic umbrella with pictures of Snoopy. His son is happy with the present, but, as the sales rep leaves for work, his son uses the umbrella as a gun and pretends to shoot him. In ‘Goats Don’t Cry’, a Galician emigrant working at a hotel in Switzerland receives a letter informing him of the decision to sell the family lands and house back in Penaverde. He decides to leave his work and return to Galicia, stopping only to relieve himself and drink a coffee. But he doesn’t stop. He continues until he reaches the family home, where the bubbles of water soothe his feet and the brambles help him keep his balance. In ‘A Trip to the Market’, an electoral candidate and his adviser return from a trip to the market, where things haven’t gone according to plan. The candidate had to look away from the eyes of fish when he shook the fishwife’s hand. And a pig farmer was furious with him for having stated that pig farming was no longer profitable. The candidate, however, managed to keep on smiling, which is what his adviser tells him to do, especially when he has nothing to say. His adviser is sure they will still win the election.

         In ‘One Million Cows’, the narrator gives a lift to an old woman who has to go to Vigo to see the doctor. When the radio presenter claims there are approximately one million cows in Galicia, she replies this is nonsense. She spent some time in Madrid, living with her son and daughter-in-law, but couldn’t put up with the noise from the flat upstairs at night, so she returned to Galicia and got herself a boyfriend. The narrator asks if the boyfriend wasn’t a doctor by any chance. In ‘The Sons of Luc & Fer’, an ecological jazz group has been wrongly billed as playing heavy rock at a farm. The audience isn’t happy listening to the ballads they play and starts to throw objects. The drummer saves the day by forcing the lead singer to announce the only loud song in their repertoire, ‘Bucolic Country’. In ‘The Mill’, a university professor of philosophy returns from his parents’ house in the country and stops at a mill where he likes to gather his thoughts. A local farmer jokes that he will sell him the mill if he wants. Back in Santiago, the professor comes across an advertisement saying the mill is for sale. He goes to the estate agent, who explains that the owners are a noble family fallen on hard times and need a down payment to show the seriousness of the client. The professor pays 200,000 pesetas, but when he returns to the estate agent, there is no one there. The police inspector is not surprised. On his next return from his parents, he stops at the mill and finds a fellow professor he has long admired also at the mill.

         In ‘The Provincial Artist’, an artist from Coruña has a large abattoir where he paints pictures of contented cows. One of his paintings attracts attention in Madrid and the artist is persuaded to move to a tiny room there in order to triumph, but, every time he tries to follow the advice of a renowned critic, he fails to convince. In the end, he goes back to painting happy cows with the blood of his hand. In ‘My Friend Tom’, a father takes his two small children to the boatyard. They climb a kind of castle, then ask for swords and argue over which is the largest. The little girl has a friend, Tom. They pretend to go fishing, so the swords become fishing rods. The boy fishes for sharks, the girl for whales and Tom for big fish, but when they get back home, the girl realises they’ve left Tom in the fishing boat. In ‘Cotton Fields’, a telephone operator at some infantry barracks receives a call from a mother asking if her son, José, can come and help with the cotton since her husband is ill. The telephone operator tries to find out his surname, since there are lots of Josés, and the company he is in. Meanwhile, the colonel asks to be put through to the captaincy in Burgos. The operator tries to deal with the woman and explains to the colonel that the line is engaged. In the end, the colonel enters the room, the soldier stands to attention and watches how the call from the woman on line five flickers and fades. In ‘Sunday’, two boys meet and talk about fishing for mullet and problems at home. Other boys turn up and there is a bit of banter. One is hoping to become a parachutist. They’re waiting for Fredo’s brother to arrive, but they spot him in the distance with a girl. The rest wonder what to do.

         The final story, ‘Madonna’, was added in a later edition and would then form part of a separate book, Christmas Stories, published in 2003. In this story, a teenager grows up on a cow farm and has to write an essay about mad cow disease, which she doesn’t want to do. She learns about negative numbers, such as debts, or people who are dead, or a number of cows under twenty, which is considered the minimum number for a farm to be profitable. Some of the villages in Galicia have a negative number of inhabitants. Her cousin, from Barcelona, names their blond cow Madonna. The cow has a calf. Her father orders them to keep the calf from its mother since otherwise the mother will hold back its milk, but the girl’s mother tells them not to.

         This is a book full of suggestive and unusual images, with varied themes, and written in Manuel Rivas’ familiar style, with poetic descriptions of the everyday and a strong vein of humour. It has been consistently successful in Galicia over the last thirty years.

Synopsis © Jonathan Dunne