VI
TUY
The last Spanish city on the Miño, the Rhine of Galicia, as beautiful as its German rival, and as rich in architectural remains, both military and ecclesiastical, is Tuy, the Castellum Tude of the Romans, lying half-way on the main road from Braga (Portugal) to Lugo and Astorga in Spain.
The approach to the city by rail from Orense is simply superb. The valley of the Miño is broad and luxuriant, with ruins of castles to the right and to the left, ahead and behind; in the distance, time-old Tuy, the city of a hundred misfortunes, is seated on an isolated hill, the summit of which is crowned by a fortress-cathedral of the twelfth century.
Tuy sits on her hill, and gazes across the river at Valença do Minho, the rival fortress opposite, and the first town in Portugal. A handsome bridge unites the enemies—[{121}]friends to-day. Nevertheless, the cannons' mouths of the glaring strongholds are for ever pointed toward each other, as though wishing to recall those days of the middle ages when Tuy was the goal of Portuguese ambitions and the last Spanish town in Galicia.
Before the Romans conquered Iberia, Tuy, which is evidently a Celtic name, was a most important town. This is easily explained by its position, a sort of inland Gibraltar, backed by the Sierra to the rear, and crowning the river which brought ships from the ocean to its wharves. The city's future was brilliant.
Matters changed soon, however. The Romans drew away much of its power to cities further inland, as was their wont. The castle remained standing, as did the walls, which reached on the northern shores of the river down to Guardia, situated in the delta about thirty miles away. Remains of the cyclopean walls which crown the mountain chain on the Spanish side of the Miño are still to be seen to-day, yet they give but a feeble idea of the city's former strength.
After the Romans had been defeated by the invasion of savage tribes from the north,[{122}] Tuy became the capital of the Suevos, a tribe opposed to the Visigoths, who settled in the rest of Spain, and for centuries waged a cruel war against the kings whose subjects had settled principally in Galicia and in the north of Portugal.
The power of the Suevos, who were seated firmly in Tuy, was at last completely broken, and the capital, its inhabitants fighting energetically to the end, was at length conquered. It was the last stronghold to fall into the hands of the conquerors. A century later Witiza, the sovereign of the Visigoths, made Tuy his capital for some length of time, and the district round about is full of the traditions of the doings of this monarch. Most of these legends denigrate his character, and make him appear cruel, wilful, and false. One of them, concerning Duke Favila and Doña Luz, is perhaps the most popular. According to it, Witiza fell in love with the former's wife, Doña Luz, and, to remove the husband, he heartlessly had his eyes put out, on the charge of being ambitious, and of having conspired against the throne. The fate that awaited Doña Luz, who defended her honour, was no better, according to this legend.[{123}]