A Roman Invasion of Spain

Romans roamed the streets of Lugo, my hometown in northwestern Spain, the day I arrived last June.

After two decades of living abroad, I had come to visit my family and my high school friends, and, to my American daughter's dismay, to speak my native tongue too fast for her to understand. What I had not anticipated when planning my trip was to find the city ablaze.

The reason, I soon found out, was that the city was celebrating, as it has since 2001, a festival aptly named Arde Lucus, Lugo is Burning, in remembrance of a time long past when Romans did, in fact, lived there.

I was impressed. I knew, of course, Lugo had been founded by Roma two thousands years ago. As a child, every day in my way to school, I had crossed the old city through the arches on the Roman walls. During the summer, I had followed the Roman road that descends to the river, and walked over the Roman bridge. But, like the city itself restrained within its walls, the Lucenses I remembered from the time I left in my late teens were proud and shy, and wary of foreigners.

Instead in the city I encountered, a multitude had poured into the streets; some wearing togas, the men, and long shifts, the women, as Romans did, while others donned the earth colors favored by the Celts, the tribes the Roman conquered.

Some of the costumes were most elaborate. But you didn't have to be a tailor or spend a lot of money to dress up, one of my friends explained. The City Hall had rented costumes, run workshops to teach how to sew them, and even had a website that explained how to make a toga out of a sheet. I must confess that despite my lack of skill with the needle, I was tempted to make one. But after stealing a look at my daughter's face, I changed my mind. She was still trying to decide whether coming to Spain with me had been a mistake. Seeing her mother wearing a white sheet was not going to help my cause.