The Mayor
Mayor Andreas Goulas of Gavalou
Gavalou (Γαβαλού) is a small village in the Agrinion Municipality, in Makryneia, a unit of Aetolia-Acarnania, Greece. Our friends George and Georgia have a house there, and divide their time between Gavalou and Greenville. They invited us to stay for a weekend.
Gavalou is just south of Lake Trichonida, which gets its name from the ancient city in the Aetolian League, Trichonium, which is now… Gavalou! Polybius, Pausanias, and Strabo write of Trichonium. Polybius especially mentions Alexander of Trichonium, who led Aetolian troops in battle against Philip V of Macedon (Polybius 5.13). Strabo says it has “excellent soil” (Strabo 10.2.3) (“καὶ τὸ Τριχώνιον ἀρίστην ἔχον γῆν”), and the flyover video above certainly bears that out.
I got tenure as a professor with a project on Athenian Democracy, so I’m interested in “politics” in the literal sense, how a polis governs itself. The Greeks have always been good at that, and you couldn’t see this more clearly than by looking at Gavalou and its tireless mayor, Andreas Goulas.
Mayor Goulas was the impresario of the community festivals that involved the whole town the weekend we were there. Traditional dancing, concerts of traditional music, jazz bands in the streets, popular music for the young people, rituals at the Makrúnia Monastery. Public feasts. Mayor Goulas organized it all, participated in it all, and was up early on Sunday cleaning up the public square with a broom and trashbags.
He personally mows the grass on the public volley-ball park (land donated to the village a local land-owner). He personally cleans the many lovely monuments, which he raised money to erect. His day job is Chief Nurse at the local hospital.
There is some kind of disease running through most of the local lambs, so they can’t be eaten—if you know Greece you know what a catastrophe this is—but Mayor Goulas has raised his own, healthy lambs, which were the main course of the dinner he held on Friday night.
Mayor Goulas knows everyone in town and was particularly welcoming to two strange Americans who showed up at the busiest time of his year. Here is Mayor Goulas (left) and our friend George (right).
Gavalou may not be Athens, but it seems to me that it has found its Pericles.