#i want to go to galicia so bad it's unfair

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

hello everybody, your friendly spaniard is here back to talk about references to spanish culture in pokemon scarlet and violet while i play the games !!! here's my previous post btw

this one's gonna be a bit shorter cause i haven't been able to play much (uni assignments are a pain in the ass), but i think i found some cool details and wanted to show them to you :)

so, this post is gonna be about one area of the game: casseroya lake. i defeated the titan and wanted to explore it a bit, and at first i didn't see any obvious references to spain so i wasn't really looking hard or taking pictures or anything. from time to time i came across trainers with suspicious names that could lead to something more but i didn't have my hopes up cause, as i have said in another post, all trainers in mount glaseado are basque and i didn't really think we were gonna get something similar in another area.

UNTIL i got to dragon tamer sabela, and something clicked. the suspicious names i had seen until them were like maybe galician maybe not??? i have to add that i don't really know much about galicia or its culture, i've literally only been to lugo one day like last year, that's it. i know, shame on me. anyways, after those names that made me a bit wary, i came across sabela which for me is THE quintesential galician name (if you think you know why i would so strongly associate sabela with galicia try and guess <3). anyways, after her i started paying attention to the other trainers i encountered and they confirmed it: this area is galicia and all the trainers have galician names. i don't have pics from those first ones, but here are some very clearly galician names

after i realized this was galicia, i started looking more into it, paying more attention and opening my mind. and i realized more stuff. bear with me, again, i know very little about galicia, and places like socarrat trail might have a very clear inspiration somewhere there that i couldn't see. i noticed some other stuff, tho. for example, the topography of the lake area and the little rivers that flow into the sea are literally just rías, which are the most known galician geographical elements. here's a side by side from the game's map and google maps:

and from the ground:

the little beach and islands you can find nearby just by porto marinado are very probably references to the cíes islands

speaking of porto marinado, i talked about its market place and didn't make much of it at first but, in perspective, it could very well just be a galician seaside town; galicia is the largest autonomous community in terms of fishing and fisheries, and its gastronomy also heavily relies on fish and seafood. once again, i don't know if there's a particular galician town that could be the basis for porto marinado; the ones that come to my mind first are ferrol (i think it's the largest port in galicia but i might be wrong), cariño (btw cariño is a term of endearment in spanish like honey or dear which automatically makes this the uwuest town in the country), combarro (prettiest town in galicia according to tons of people), and sanxenxo (resort town for the rich).

also!!! the lighthouse next to porto marinado is probably a reference to the tower of hercules, built by the romans in the 2nd century, it is the oldest working lighthouse in the world and has cool myths associated with it, both roman and celtic (you can read them on wikipedia they're pretty neat)

finally, the most obvious reference to galicia is one of the ten wonders of paldea. i have no idea what's its name in english, but in spanish they're the rocas graciñas (graciñas rocks). fun neat trick to recognize galician words / surnames: if you see a word ending in -iño / a or -eiro / a, it's probably galician. 'graciñas' is like a stereotypical way galicians say 'thank you' in spanish (gracias is thank you), but i don't really know if it's a stereotype or if they really do say it. anyways, they're probably a reference to the costa da morte (coast of death), which made me wish there was a shipwreck you could explore in the area (they don't call it death coast for nothing lol). also they lost a great oportunity to have binacle and barbaracle spawn in this area, cause barnacles are really popular in galicia, there's even a traditional job called percebeiras dedicated to 'fishing' them, it's listed as one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.

i can't believe i was about to post this without mentioning the elephant in the room. that is, casseroya lake itself. galicia doesn't have any mayor lakes (that i know of?) but the largest lake in spain is very close to galicia; it's lake sanabria, in the province of zamora! that is the only logical inspiration behind casseroya lake, there aren't really that many large lakes in spain and especially not in the northwest, there's only sanabria lake.

and that's basically it! it's nice that they included galicia here even if i still think they could've done a galician city / town, or maybe some ruins in the form of a castro, something like that. anyways, it's something i guess.

this also made me think that i should've been paying more attention to the names of trainers throughout the region cause there's probably more patterns like these that i missed. like there's at least one area full of catalan names for sure, and i fear i've missed it. when all the trainer info is done in wikidex i'll go over them to see if i find something more. for now i looked at the names for this area and glaseado mt in english and they're just normal spanish names :/

anyways, i'll try and pay more attention for the areas in paldea i've yet to discover!!! (basically the area around the fighting team star squad and area zero). hope you liked this deep dive into galicia!