WE spent another week in Santiago after our return from Noya, and then proceeded by train to Pontevedra, the chief town of the province of that name.[247] Two of the stations we passed on the way were Padron and Villagarcia. It was at Villagarcia that a British fleet lay for several weeks in the spring of 1907, as I found to my cost, for the officers had been before me and had bought up all the best photographs available in several of the neighbouring towns. Villagarcia is beautifully situated on the eastern bank of the Ria de Arosa, nineteen kilometres from the town of Pontevedra, and is called la Perla de Arosa (the Pearl of Arosa). It has a population of about seven thousand. The sea-bathing here is excellent, and there are delightful walks in the vicinity; but the fact that King Alfonso has selected it as the site of his new summer palace is perhaps the best proof we can give of its healthful beauty and charm.
Pontevedra, surrounded by hills on three sides, is situated on a small peninsular formed by the rivers Lerez, Alba, and Tomeya, just before they empty themselves into the sea. During the Middle Ages the town was surrounded by a rampart with bastions and castellated towers at regular intervals. A little to the north on the road to Santiago there is a magnificent stone bridge over the river Lerez, with twelve arches; it was built upon the site of an older bridge in 1765, and is also called Puente del Burgo. There are many old houses in the town, with the escutcheons of influential families still upon their walls.
Pontevedra too has her ancient history: she claims, on the authority of Strabo, to have been founded by the Greeks, who came over with Teucer, and to have been called Los Helenos in consequence. Strabo got this information from Asclepeades Merleanus (the Grammarian of Andalusia).[248] It is not known when the name was changed, but there seems no doubt that it must have been about the time of the advent of the Romans, and that Pontevedra is derived from Pons vetus. Roman milestones discovered during the last hundred and fifty years prove by their inscriptions that at least one of the Roman military roads passed this way.[249]
During the Middle Ages Pontevedra was a town of considerable maritime importance; Molina calls it “the largest town in Galicia,” with a fishing trade of seldom less than eighty thousand ducats annually, and says, “it trades with Valencia, Andalusia, Sicily, and places even more distant; more than a hundred vessels laden with sardines leave its port every year.” All the activity and all the wealth of this town was connected with the sea; its merchant fishermen formed among themselves a sort of fishing guild, and, like the Hanseatic League, kept all the maritime commerce in their own hands, including that of all the towns on the Ria de Arosa, as well as Marin and Vigo. Pontevedra was the only port for loading and unloading vessels all along the coast from Bayona to Los Trangueiros; she also, along with Noya, had a monopoly of the preparation of fish oil, conceded to them by Fernando in 1238. On one occasion, when twelve or thirteen Pontevedrans had been carried off by Turkish pirates, the Archbishop of Santiago, Don Gaspar Avalos, granted these merchants a very curious privilege, namely, that they might fish on Sundays, provided that they would spend the money so made in ransoming the captives.
The fishers’ league, or guild, was called Gremio de la Cofradia del Cuerpo Santo, and the merchant fishermen called themselves Mareantes: they had their own ordinances, laws, and regulations, and, being an extremely powerful and wealthy body, they had control of all municipal affairs, and always came off best in any dispute with their neighbours. In gratitude to Heaven for the prosperity which they enjoyed, these merchant fishers subscribed money to build a church worthy of their town, and the result was the beautiful edifice of Santa Maria la Grande. The money was not subscribed all at once in a lump sum, but different parts of the church were built at the expense of the various donors. In the façade to the right of the principal entrance is an inscription giving the name of a Mareante—Bartolamé Trigo—and stating exactly what part of the wall had been paid for out of his pocket. Now, two Bartolames figure in the local documents of the fifteenth century, one young and one old, so that, in spite of all his care, we cannot be sure whether this donor was the son or the father. Inside the church there are many more such inscriptions on the walls and on the pillars. Sometimes the wife’s name figures beside that of the husband, as for instance in the oldest of the side chapels, where we find an inscription giving the names of Juan de Barbeito and his wife Taresa, and stating that they were the founders of the chapel; it is the oldest of all the inscriptions. Here is one from the right wall beneath the choir[250]—
AQUI : MANDOV : FAZER
JUAN : DECELIS : E SU MUGE
R : DUAS : BRACAS : DE
PAPEDE
Juan de Celis was an influential Mareante of the early days of the sixteenth century. But my readers must not think that the church, because each paid for his own bit of work, was like a patchwork quilt, with work of all shapes and sizes. It is, on the contrary, a remarkably beautiful edifice, and the only patchwork about it results from a fusion of several styles of architecture. Here we find, it is true, the Gothic merging into the Renaissance style, but the fusion is brought about with consummate skill, and, in the opinion of those most competent to judge, the architect could not have succeeded better; he had to keep in touch with the art of the thirteenth century, and at the same time to introduce
MERCHANT’S PALACE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, NOYA