Galicia, the Switzerland of Spain

by Annette M. B. Meakin

In olden days the tower was surrounded on the outside by a wide spiral stair supported at each corner by a stone pillar. On November 17, 1684, the English, Dutch, and Flemish consuls pointed out to the Captain-General, the Duke of Uceda, the great convenience that would result were he to turn the Tower of Hercules into a lighthouse. The three consuls stated further that all the expenses could be easily defrayed if a small contribution were levied on each vessel that entered the harbour during the space of ten years. The outer staircase must have ceased to exist before the year 1549, since at that date the monk Francisco Molina of Malaga stated in his History of Galicia that it had been taken down, he did not know by whom. Molina also stated that this tower was so famous that few authors omitted to mention it. “Some say,” he added, “that it once had a great mirror in which could be seen the ships at sea, no matter how far away they might be sailing,” but he explains that all this was a fable, and that what the tower really had was “a light, which it ought to have still, to guide the ships that would enter the port by night. This tower,” he continues, “is close to the town, on the seashore: it is of such great height and of such antiquity that it is truly a marvel, and its winding stone stair, which once formed part of the tower, was the most remarkable thing about it; a cart drawn by two oxen could mount to the top.” This last sentence gives one the idea that there must have been ramps, not steps. As for the mirror mentioned above, it may perhaps have been a metal camera obscura something after the style of that to be seen in our day in the Observatory on Clifton Downs.

Florez looked upon the story of the mirror as a fable, and thought it must have originated from the fact that Orosius speaks of a very lofty lighthouse in Galicia called a Specula. Florez also states that the present tower cannot be traced farther back than to the Romans; moreover, the material of which it is built is the same as that of other Roman structures. The historical notices of this tower differ so much from one another that the exact truth regarding its erection seems unobtainable, but the most trustworthy reference is thought to be the one which indicates that it was the work of the Emperor Trajan, because no geographer before his date makes mention of the existence of such a colossal monument. The following inscription has been found on one of the rocks which form its foundations:—

MARTI
AUG. SACR
G. SEVIVS
LUPUS
ARCHITECTVS
AF . . . . SIS
LVSITANVS. EX. Vº.

Sir John Moore is not the only Englishman with whose name Coruña is closely connected in the minds of the Spaniards. In the year 1589, Sir Francis Drake came with sixty ships, landed English troops at Coruña, and took possession of the convent of Santo Domingo, which was situated on the highest point in the town. He fortified the building, manned it with English soldiers, and built batteries around it, intending to subdue the town; but all his attempts to do so were frustrated by the courage and patriotism of a woman—Maria Pita. Drake was eventually compelled to retire with a loss of fifteen thousand men, but he set fire to the convent before evacuating it, and it was burned to the ground. Ever since that time Coruña has celebrated yearly, in the month of August, a popular festival of a religious character which is called Fiestas de Maria Pita.

Maria Pita, sometimes called Maria Fernandez de Pita, was a poor woman from the street, who, seizing the sword of a dead soldier, gathered the people of Coruña together and inspired them with courage to resist Drake. In fact, it was she who, sword in hand, led the attack which forced Drake and the troops under General Henry Noris to abandon their position and quit the town. In her honour the chief square in Coruña is called Plaza de Maria Pita. Every year the best preacher obtainable is invited to preach a carefully prepared sermon to the people of Coruña in the church of St. George (the largest church in the town) on the subject of Maria Pita’s victory over Sir Francis Drake. There is not a child in the province who has not heard of the courage and dauntless bravery of Maria Pita. She is one of Spain’s heroines. Five years after Drake’s departure, in the reign of Philip II., a new convent was begun upon the site of the one that had been destroyed. It was completed in the reign of Philip III. It is dedicated to the Virgin of the Rosary, the patron saint of the town.[189]

Fishing is the most important industry in Coruña, and excellent ice factories recently planted in the neighbourhood have given the trade a wonderful impetus. Formerly, for want of ice to keep the fish cool, a great deal was spoiled, and it was almost impossible to make use of the fish caught, or to send it to any great distance, in a country where the sun is so powerful. But now ice factories supply the fishing-smacks with ice, and they can go out and fish four days consecutively, the ice they take with them keeping the fish cool and fresh. Ice is also used in great quantities for packing the fish destined for Madrid, where the demand is still greater than the supply. Every evening a special fish train leaves Coruña at 6 p.m. for Madrid. There is tremendous bustle and excitement among the fisher-folk before the train starts. We stood on the wharf one afternoon and watched the smacks come in, their decks piled high with silvery sardines. Women and children helped to carry the sardines up the gangway in baskets balanced on their heads, and, depositing them in the warehouse, proceeded to wash them in the running water and place them with lightning speed in the wooden boxes ready to receive them. The sardines were thrown into the boxes in handfuls, spread out, and sprinkled with salt, till the boxes were almost full, and then a carefully assorted row was laid on top. Each basket that was filled with sardines from the newly arrived boat was so heavy that it took four persons to lift it on to a woman’s head! Since the latest appliances for the production of ice have reached Coruña, that commodity has become cheap and plentiful, and consequently the price that the inhabitants have to pay for fish for their own tables has risen tremendously. Before there was ice available for packing fish and preserving it, sardines were so cheap that they were almost given away, and the poor made them their principal food. They are now a delicacy which the very poor cannot afford to buy.

We visited an important ice factory, and watched the ice being made with the help of liquid ammonia. By expansion of the liquid the necessary cold is produced, the ammonia is pumped into the congealer and then compressed and cooled by water, after which it again becomes liquid; and so the process is repeated. Sea water is pumped into the factory at the rate of fourteen tons an hour, by means of electricity. We saw the pipe running along the beach; it was two hundred yards long. The water enters the pipe at a depth of seven yards below the surface. As I have said, we watched the ice being made. Fresh water filled great tin moulds; these were then let down into a tank containing salt water rendered very cold by means of pipes beneath, filled with the ammonia which had been expanded from its liquid state into gas. The degree of cold which is sufficient to freeze fresh water does not freeze salt water, so only the water in the moulds was turned to ice. When the water in the moulds had become ice, they were raised out of the salt water and tipped up so that the ice blocks could slide out; each block weighed twenty kilos. That the blocks might slip out easily, the moulds were dipped for an instant into hot water. If the heat is too great, the ice sticks; but if it is exactly the right temperature, the ice blocks slip out easily, like puddings out of a pudding mould. The blocks of ice are kept in an ice-house with pipes of ammonia running over the ceiling to keep the temperature at freezing-point. The windows of the ice-house were made of prisms, like bottles filled with air; they let the light of the sun enter, but not its heat.

The sardines are caught in draughts.[190] They shun very cold water, and are most plentiful on the Galician coast at periods when the Gulf Stream flows nearest to the shore. Fishermen can tell when the sardines are coming. As many as four hundred deal boxes (as large as petroleum cases) are sent to Madrid every day from one factory during the sardine season. The packing is almost all done by women. The women work with far more energy than the men. This fact was pointed out to me by the manager of the principal factory, and I saw for myself that it was correct. Strange to say, it is only among the poorer classes that the women of Galicia are remarkable for their energy.

“Our ladies are too fat, because life is too easy; they have not enough work either for mind or body,” said a Spanish gentleman. “Even our men are lazy,” he added. “In Spain a man waits to inherit his father’s worldly goods, and as long as his father lives he remains the son, and nothing else; he only gets responsibility and independence at his father’s death. In England, on the contrary, a father gives his son responsibility, educates him, and then expects him to make a position for himself.”

Coruña has not so many chocolate factories as formerly. When Cuba belonged to Spain, the Cubans exported large quantities of cocoa nibs to the mother country, but, since the war, that branch of commerce has been interfered with to such an extent that many manufacturers have left Spain to settle in Cuba and start factories over there instead, so that Coruña has lost much of her chocolate-making industry. I visited a Coruña chocolate factory and saw cocoa nibs put into a machine and ground to powder; in another machine the powder was being mixed with cane sugar; and in a third the blocks of chocolate, weighing a hundredweight, were being cut up into half-pound strips; a fourth machine kept the little tin moulds into which the melted chocolate was poured continuously shaking, so that the chocolate might not stick. In the next department we watched a number of women rolling up chocolate cigarettes in silver paper.