Last Friday, July 10, the chapel das Ánimas in Santiago de Compostela hosted the funeral in memory of Alonso Cortada, the Cantabrian who one day fell in love with Compostela, where he had died in April. The pandemic, the state of alarm and the restrictions derived from the health crisis prevented him from giving him the goodbye he deserved, but finally, it was possible to celebrate thanks to the efforts of some of the women who accompanied him in the last years of his life. One of them is Nuk López, a photographer who met him when he was studying at the University of Santiago. “She was someone very friendly, with her I started to chat. He was the man of stone because together with 3 other men who lived on the street they edited a kind of fanzine in which they told what his life was like, the publication was called ‘The men of stone’ and hence his nickname ”he told us in Today for Today Cantabria.
Little is known of his life. “It was an enigma. All of us who knew him had different versions, so there will always be the question of what was true and what was not “, Nuk explained.
In the common story, they agree that he left Santander very young and began to make a pilgrimage. He ended up arriving in Santiago where his health problems began and he was accompanied by his inseparable ‘Rubia’, a dog that he met on the way and now lives with Vera, another of her friends. “La Rubia is going through a somewhat complicated period of adaptation, she misses Alonso, howls and calls him, but she has been lucky because she is very well cared for.”
Varicose veins in the esophagus and loss of brain function due to a liver that was not able to remove toxins from the blood. Alonso Cortada’s medical history showed delicate health. I was waiting for a transplant that did not arrive in time. He shared a flat and paid his share with money that he collected every month. He worked, but in the Galician capital he got a scallop shell. He never asked. And he was grateful to those who gave him a coin. Reached the Workshop on the Vía de la Plata, he fell in love and never moved again.
No one in his inner circle was going to allow him to stay in a mass grave. A cremation, yes. The ashes have them Chus Iglesias, “Closely related to groups in exclusion and who managed everything during confinement.” Now they hope that these ashes can come to Santander “because a brother has already contacted us.”
Nuk’s lens has captured the “mischievous and enigmatic” gaze of the wanderer that gave off “compassion and melancholy”. The photographer, who lives between Compostela and France, has captured her story in a documentary that is already finished and awaits its premiere, “The man of stone”, It will be the posthumous tribute to the figure of Alonso Cortada.
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