“There is a Galician on the moon”, the group Zapato Veloz sang with psychedelic chords back in the 90s. That the privileged inhabitants of the northwest corner of the peninsula have come so far is something that is not known, but since then it would be one of the very few places where it is not possible to find them. them, or at least one of his descendants.
Let’s review. Gallegos have passed through the White House, Hollywood and the Mauthausen concentration camp. Even Diego Velázquez portrayed one in his famous canvas of Las meninas. Nothing extraordinary, on the other hand, in a town accustomed to packing to emigrate.
Gallegas were the roots of Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl, former Argentine president Raúl Alfonsín, singer Julio Iglesias or actor Martin Sheen. There are even those who affirm that as soon as one digs into the past of Christopher Columbus, perhaps the most disputed historical celebrity of birth, it is discovered that his origins are far from Genoa and point towards —Exactly!— Galicia.
This being the case, if there are Galicians from Mint to Mecca, why wouldn’t one have sat at the head of the USSR? It may sound almost as far-fetched as the lyrics of the Zapato Veloz song, but that is precisely what a theory held with some echo more than three decades ago.
There is a Galician in… the leadership of the CPSU
Between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, while the Soviet Union was writing its last lines, here in Spain, the theory began to stir that Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was of Galician descent and, strictly speaking, the correct way to refer to it was to him Mr Corbacho.
Shocking, I know, but the theory reached a certain predicament in the national press. His runrún ended up being replicated —sometimes with undisguised sarcasm— in newspapers like The region either The country. Now, after the death of the former Soviet leader, that old theory has refloated again in networks and media.
The boom in theory dates back almost four decades, to August 1986when the newspaper correspondent The region in Valdeorras he published that a group of investigators had discovered the alleged Galician ancestry of the general secretary of the PCUS.
The theory, of course, was worthy of the best pages of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.
Let’s see.
Apparently, some Spanish newspapers in the 80s spread the theory that Gorbachev’s real name was Miguel Corbacho and he was the grandson of a Galician immigrant pic.twitter.com/5AXo9e9eJp
– Crazy Ass Spanish Politics Moments (@Spol_Moments) August 31, 2022
The chronicle went back to the grandfather of the Soviet leader, a Galician named Anton Corbacho who ended up emigrating to Central Europe and participating in the Revolution of 1917. He did not do badly there: he prospered, ended up directing one of the most important kolkhoz in the Caucasus and had a son whom he called —of course— with the very traditional name of Manuel. All this, of course, according to the Galician theory.
Manuel did not do badly in Russia either. He was able to study at the seminary in Tbilisi, adopted Soviet nationality and gave the old emigrant from Valdeorras a grandson: a boy he named Miguel. Or almost. Since the boy’s roots in Ourense were already a bit distant, his father opted for a less exotic name: Mijael Gorbachev, a sort of adaptation of the original Corbacho.
In the piece published in The regionnot very extensive, it was made clear that everything was a theory, a “possible” without demonstrating. I do not care. Its premise was so juicy that it raised dust and ended up replicated with some sarcasm in the pages of The country. Since then other websites and some media have followed, such as Uppers or the Onda Cero chain. You can even read a letter to the editor on the subject published last year in the Argentine newspaper the press.
The issue has now gained ground once again with the death of the former Soviet leader and a tweet from the account @Spol_Moments that recovers the theory of the Corbachos and includes a small dossier with press clippings from the 80s and 90s in which you can even read a chronicle from October 1990 in which the Russian Hispanist Svetlana Pozharskaya denies the theory: “I admire the humor Galician”.
Decades later, some still do not seem entirely convinced.
After all, if there is a Galician on the Moon… Why couldn’t there have been? at the head of the CPSU.
Image: Commons