A Corner of Spain

by Walter Wood

Through such a country as this the traveller may go by motor-car or railway from one fjord to another, rarely long out of sight of blue water most of the way from Vigo to the bellisima Noya, by the holy town of Padron, where the body of St. James first took harbour on its miraculous voyage from the Holy Land to the country that thenceforward was to be its home. In old times it was part of the great pilgrimage after worshipping at the shrine of the Saint at Santiago to trudge on to Padron, the Iria Flavia of the Romans, and the ancient Galician verse says:

"Quien va á Santiago

E non va al Padron

O' faz romeria ó non."

Through the Middle Ages a stream of pilgrims wended their way from all Christian lands to Santiago. The innumerable stars of the Milky Way are called by Spaniards "the road of Santiago," expressive of the vast concourse of the faithful that flocked to the Galician shrine.

I have before me as I write a naïve relation of a German priest, the envoy, by the way, of an emperor seeking a Portuguese bride, who thought it his duty on the way to worship at the sainted tomb of Santiago. His narrative marks quaintly the immense difference that has come over the world since the mid-fifteenth century in which he wrote. On arriving at Astorga the band of pilgrims who travelled together, and of which he and his colleague formed part, were advised to go no farther for the present, as one of the great rieving territorial nobles, who afterwards gave Ferdinand and Isabella so much trouble to crush, was ravaging Galicia and making war on the all-powerful favourite of the King, Don Alvaro de Luna. The pilgrims being very numerous, decided to run the risk, confiding in the harmless and meritorious character of their journey. Not far from Pontevedra, however, they fell in with a strong force of freebooters, who at once attacked them, wounding many and stripping the whole company to the skin. On their knees, and in mortal terror, the Emperor's envoys showed their credentials and prayed for mercy, but no attention was paid to them, though they invoked Santiago and all the other saints in the calendar. They were allowed, at last, to go on the way with their companions, despoiled and, as the narrator says, "full of pain, suffering and anguish, passing through towns burnt and sacked by the marauders."

At last arriving at Pontevedra some kindness was shown them, and, on foot still, the whole band trudged on to Santiago. After visiting the shrine there they walked, as in duty bound, "with certain pilgrims from Ireland," to Padron, where beneath the waves they were shown the stone ship that had brought to the port the body of the apostle. Then to another shrine at Finisterre also they went on foot, and finally, their religious duty being ended, they proceeded on their matrimonial mission to Portugal.

The streets of Santiago can have changed but little since those far-off days of pious pilgrimage, when from all points of Christendom came the countless thousands to expiate sins or seek salvation. As the big omnibus from Cornes station bumps and rumbles into the streets of the ancient city, almost the only vehicle that ever invades them, a plunge is made into the centuries of long ago. Narrow slab-paved streets with dim arcades on both sides, above which houses of unimaginable antiquity are reared. Scallop shells adorn the fronts of many of them, indicating that they were formerly pilgrims' lodgings, and carved coats of arms with knightly casques above remind us that in the old days nobles, too, lived in the streets of the holy city. It looks almost an anachronism for men and women in modern garb to wander through these silent streets and to tread the very slabs worn thin by the pilgrim shoon of the centuries of faith so long ago.

Though lacking its sacred associations, Pontevedra in its way is almost as quaint as Santiago. Standing at the head of its lovely Ria, just where the river Lerez joins the bay, it is surrounded by gracious hills backed by the Sierra high aloft. No words can exaggerate the luxuriant character of the vegetation all around. As elsewhere, maize and vines floor the valleys and lower slopes with abundant fruit trees and a wilderness of flowers. Above are the oaks, sycamores, and chestnuts, then higher still the grave solemn pines, crowned at last by bare rocky summits glittering and gilded in the sun. The ancient Plaza and Calle Real of Pontevedra, with arcade-arches so low that most Englishmen have to stoop to enter them, must present the same aspect as in the Middle Ages; these very houses and arcades must have stood as now when Columbus sailed in his Pontevedra ship to discover the New World. Whether the great "admiral of the ocean sea" was, as some have not hesitated to assert, of Pontevedran origin himself it is difficult now to decide; but certain it is that many of the Spanish sea-dogs who guided the conquistadores into the unknown were men from Pontevedra and the adjoining port of Marin.

All Galicia is historic ground for Englishmen. Its bays and harbours have been the resort of our ships in peace and war from time immemorial, and here in Pontevedra the English John of Gaunt reigned for years as so-called King of Castile in right of his wife the daughter of Peter the Cruel. Here in the country round the Sotomayors, the Sarmientos, the Fonsecas, and Montenegros fought out their endless feuds in which the warlike archbishops of Santiago took a frequent part, until the great Isabella with iron hand and virile energy crushed them all with her hermandad. Here in the neighbourhood was born that Sarmiento whom we in England know best, him of Gondomar, who ruled our crowned poltroon James I. by bluff and mother wit. To the Sarmientos too belonged that Maria de Salinas as she is incorrectly called in our annals, the devoted friend of Katherine of Aragon, and the ancestress of the house of Willoughby d'Eresby.