Mercedes Square

Ink/paper, 16x11

Series: The enduring Ourense.

IN THE PYLON of this fountain, many years ago, I saw two rats drown. A woman brought them in a large collective wire mousetrap. The rats swam at the edge of the water, and the woman, with a stick, pushed them away from the shore, with cruel cruelty, until they got tired and fell to the bottom, one after another. I contemplated, with a wrinkled heart, the agony of the first. These things should not be done in the shade of trees. Women have bad hearts.

Vicente Risco

MERCEDES SQUARE.- Formerly Pía da Casca in memory of the pylon that some Piliteiro must have has for tanning skins in the Middle Ages. Nearby Gonzalo Pérez de Requeixo built the famous “Milladoiro” with its Fleur de Lis cross, in honor of God and the Holy Angels, in the year of our God, 1460. Next to an old hermitage of Our Lady, it was founced in the 17th century, The School of our Lady of Mercedes for the gathering of maidens and ladies. At the end of the 18th century, the great Cardinal Quevedo renovated the school an the building. After the confiscation it was a Hospital and Hospice. Today it is school again.

Ferro Couselo

See publication The enduring Ourense