Annette M. B. Meakin

Betanzos and the Phoenicians—Earliest inhabitants—The Fiesta de Caneiros—Municipal archives—Market day—The “abominable tribute”—Tiobre—May Day—San Martin de Tiobre—Santa Eulalia de Espenuca—The Church of Santiago—Its slanting architecture—A tower of the Middle Ages—Santa Maria de Azogue—San Francisco—The tomb of FernÁn PerÉz de Andrade—The Church at Cambre—A forerunner of Toledo Cathedral—Was it planned by Mateo?—Petrus Petri—The drive to Puentedeume and Ferrol—Borrow on Ferrol—The great Arsenal of Spain—Modern enterprise at Ferrol—A trait in the Spanish character

BETANZOS is one of the oldest towns in Spain; some writers think it was founded by the Phoenician traders who came to the north-western coast in search of tin and other metals. Betanzos was one of the seven provinces into which ancient Galicia was divided, and throughout the Middle Ages it had a considerable degree of importance. The Ria, on the bank of which the town of Betanzos stands, is now shallow and unimportant, but there is every reason to believe that in the days of the ancients its waters were navigable up to the town walls, and covered with shipping. Betanzos is now in the province of CoruÑa and only one hour distant by train from the town of that name. As we had not been able to visit it during our sojourn at CoruÑa, we made it our next halting-place after Lugo: the journey (by express train) occupied just two hours. The province of Lugo contained, during the Middle Ages, more monasteries than any other part of Galicia, but to-day there is only one ruined monastery left, and that is at Sarria, the first town at which our train stopped after leaving Lugo.

The earliest inhabitants of Betanzos were probably a mixed community of Greeks and Celts: the Romans called the town either Brigantium Flavium, after Vespasian (or Titus), who founded the Roman city about 72 A.D., or Flavia Lambris. The present town stands on what is now only a small creek, nearly a mile distant from the sea, and only small boats can reach it. On three sides there are sloping hills mostly covered with woods and pasture land, so that the situation of the place is decidedly picturesque. Many residents of Madrid and other inland towns have villas here for the summer months; and as it is only a few miles from CoruÑa, it is better known to Spaniards than most parts of Galicia. The river Mandeo flows through the town and discharges itself into the creek or ria. On August 18, every year the inhabitants celebrate their Fiesta de Caneiros. This is a kind of Battle of Flowers which takes place upon the ria. The water is covered with boats gaily decorated with flowers. The tide carries the holiday-makers out towards the sea, and with it they return in the evening after much feasting and merry-making. The festival is a unique one even to Spaniards, and friends who have taken part in it speak with rapture of the brilliance and beauty of the scene. Myriads of garland-covered boats are borne upon the water, and happy faces peep from under the festoons of flowers and foliage.

At Betanzos the best hotel is nothing but a country inn. From its windows we looked out upon the open space known as Plazo del Campo, on the opposite side of which stands a handsome eighteenth-century building which served at one time as the principal municipal archives of Galicia; part of it is now a municipal school for boys. Over the principal entrance, which is reached by a double flight of stone steps, are the ancient arms of Galicia (a chalice containing the Host). Omnibuses to Ferrol and Puentedeume start in front of this building, and there is always plenty of movement, but on market days the scene is particularly varied and interesting, and on the first and sixteenth of every month a fair is held here. During the fair one corner of the Plaza becomes a cattle market, another is filled with horses, and another with pigs. The crowd is so great that one can only make one’s way through with difficulty.

Betanzos is full of interest for archÆologists. To begin with, it is closely associated with the legend of the Hundred Maidens to which I have elsewhere alluded. Molina says in this connection, “Of all that I am writing in this little book, there is no subject more worthy of attention than the story of the abominable tribute that King Mauregato levied upon the Christians,” and he then proceeds to tell how a few noble-spirited Gallegan youths rushed upon the Moors at a spot called Pecte Burdelo, and freed Spain for ever from their disgraceful demands. A street in Betanzos bears to this day the name “Street of the Hundred Maidens” (Calle de las Cien Doncellas).

The oldest parish in the modern town is Bravio, and its churches date from the second half of the twelfth century.[287] The oldest parish of the ancient town is Tiobre. We walked up the hill to see the little church of Tiobre, which stands on an eminence to the north-east of the town. It was the second of May, the day on which Spanish children hold their festival which corresponds with our election of a May Queen. At one spot in the road we found a party of children supporting an arch gaily decorated with coloured ribbons. A small child of three was being made to pass beneath the arch with closed eyes, while the children sang a verse about the sleep of Winter; then, as they sang of the coming of Spring and of the waking up of the flowers and birds, the child was made to open its eyes and pass beneath the arch once more. I took a snapshot of the merry group, and then we proceeded up the hill past the modern church of Nuestia SeÑora del Caneiro, to which many pilgrimages are still made. From the cemetery we had a very fine view of the town below, though we could not see the whole of it. I noticed that the town lay so snugly amongst its many hills that from whatever eminence you might look down upon it some of its streets were always hidden from view. Beyond the church we had to walk single file between fields of wheat and rye till we came to the little church of San Martin de Tiobre. It is a very small granite edifice with a handsome Romanesque entrance and a lateral door in the same style, while over the triumphal arch it has a rose window, which has unfortunately been closed up, so that the interior is darker than it should be. There are four columns with beautifully sculptured capitals, two on either side of the chief entrance. The roof of the nave is of wood, but the vaulting of the apse is stone. A few months previous to my visit an inscription was discovered on the wall, below the rose window and a little to the left, but it had not yet been deciphered. The fronton which supports the bell is, of course, eighteenth-century work. It is a pity that the granite blocks of which the church is built have been all lined out with white paint.

There is no finer view obtainable of Betanzos than that from the little platform surrounding the Tiobre church. This eminence is in reality a very large tumulus, which is supposed to date from the days of the Celts and is called El castro de Tiobre, from the two Celtic words—Dis, God; and obre, town. According to the Historia Compostelana there was a church here called San Martin de Tiobre in the ninth century. The architecture of the existing edifice is Romanico-Byzantine, the prevalent style all over Galicia during the Middle Ages. Dr. Oviedo says that this church must have been built after 1224, the date at which Alfonso IX. moved the population from old Betanzos to the new town.

On a steep hill to the south of Betanzos known as Santa Eulalia de Espenuca there are some very ancient caverns, or natural grottos, supposed to have sheltered a troglodite tribe in prehistoric times. The name Espenuca is derived from the Latin spelunca, a cave. On the western slope of this hill there are also some granite tombs, monoliths shaped to hold the body, such as were common in the eighth and ninth centuries, but more correct in their design, and therefore possibly belonging to a still earlier date. Dr. Oviedo believes there existed here a Christian church and parish as early as the fifth, and documents prove that there was one here in the ninth, century.

From Tiobre we had noted the two elegant spires that were added some six years ago to the church of Santiago, and thither we now repaired. In the tympanum of the arch over the chief entrance to this church there is a piece of sculptured relief representing St. James on horseback; he waves a sword with his right hand and holds a flag with his left. Before him kneels a young woman with her hands upraised in supplication—evidently one of the hundred maidens about to be sent as tribute to the Moors just before the famous battle of Clavijo.

The tympanum is surrounded by a triple archivolt resting on a jamb with three corresponding shafts. Dr. Oviedo was greatly struck by the representation in one of the archivolts of the Last Supper. He calls it “a book in stone,” unique in Galicia and possibly also in Spain, as showing a special phase in the sculptural art of the Middle Ages. The sculpture on the capitals is the most eccentric that I have ever met with in Galicia: on one there is a lion with the head of a man, and on another a monk is embracing a lion. On entering the church I was surprised to find that the whole building leaned a little to one side, after the manner of Santa Maria de Sar.[288] When the new towers were added, about six years ago, the nave was cleared to its real depth and the bones of the many dead who had been buried there were removed. There are three naves. The stained glass in the graceful lancet windows of the Gothic apses is modern, and came from the factory at Leon. The roofing is of wood and supported by six Gothic arches. The scultptured decoration of the chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul is interesting.

Exactly opposite the church of Santiago there is a square tower, evidently intended for the protection of this town during the early Middle Ages; it is now used as a dwelling-house.

Another church worth visiting is that of Santa Maria de Azogue. We found it in the midst of repairs and full of scaffolding. In this church too there is the same kind of slant as that at Sar. Dr. Eladio Oviedo is of the opinion that both this church and that of Santiago date from the fourteenth century—that is, from the second period of Gothic art.

We next visited the ex-conventual church of San Francisco, beneath whose pavement lie buried more than a hundred distinguished men belonging to the highest aristocracy of Galicia. One is impressed at once with the sculptural decoration of the chief entrance, which is purely Romanesque. Villa-Amil considers this church to be the most remarkable—from the point of view of sculpture—of all the Franciscan edifices in Galicia, and he adds that we have no clue to the exact date of any one of them. The sculptured sarcophagus of FernÁn PerÉz de Andrade has an inscription with the date 1387. This sarcophagus rests on the back of a bear and a wild boar, both life size. On it is the recumbent mail-clad effigy of Andrade, who must have been a great sportsman, for his feet rest upon two dogs, each of which has a smaller dog between its paws; another dog is biting the corner of his stone pillow; the outer side of the sarcophagus is covered with alto-relief representing a lively boar hunt, in which are to be distinguished four huntsmen on horseback and a number of dogs, one of which has got hold of a boar and is biting its ear; each dog wears a collar; there is a second boar in the rear. There are a number of other tombs, but the one I have just described is by far the most striking of them all.

One end of the transept is lighted by a rose window, the other has double lancet windows. The triumphal arch leading to the chief apse is adorned with the sculptured figures of angels and grotesques. There are three Gothic apses with lancet windows. The exterior of this church is peculiar, with its tiled roofing, and the whole style of it strikes one as very archaic.

A few miles out of Betanzos, on the railway line to Lugo, but situated in the province of CoruÑa, there is a small station called Cambre, and here every visitor interested in Spanish

architecture should break his journey and pay a visit to the church of Santa Maria de Cambre, the conventual church of a Benedictine monastery founded in the tenth century. The church is all that now remains of the monastery, and it is not the primitive edifice, as it only dates from the thirteenth century. This church has excited considerable interest among Spanish archÆologists, from the fact that its dimensions and disposition are exactly those of the cathedrals of the Middle Ages: it is in the form of a Latin cross, with three naves and a transept, a girola and absidal chapels; it has six cruciform pillars on either side of the chief nave, the four which support the girola being more massive than the others. Lamperez, who has made this edifice an object of careful study, was particularly impressed by the exquisite harmony of its entire plan. Five graceful Gothic apse chapels, semicircular in plan, are clustered round the head of the building. All the windows are Romanesque with lobular archivolts and chess pattern ornamentation. The chief entrance is also Romanesque, with a triple arch and sculptured tympanum. As we have already seen, the Romanesque style was employed by Gallegan architects right up to the fifteenth century, long after it had been discarded by the rest of Spain. We have seen how the cloister of San Francisco at Lugo was built in that style in the fifteenth century, and we have noted the Romanesque entrance to San Maria del Azogue at Betanzos, and the pillars of Santa Maria of Pontevedra, which are an example of the employment of the Romanesque style as late even as the sixteenth century.

The arrangement of the five semicircular apses at Cambre is the same as that of the apses in Santiago Cathedral, as also is the sculpture of the capitals, so here we have one more proof of the tyrannical influence which Santiago Cathedral extended over Galicia. Lopez Ferreiro thought that the church at Cambre might have been planned by Mateo, the architect of the PÓrtico de Gloria, but Lamperez has recently found an inscription in the chief nave, Micael Petri me fecit, and on a column in the same wall he has found the letters P. P. one above the other. “Does this stand for Petrus Petri?” he cries. “The mere mention of this name so glorious in the annals of Spanish architecture demands the most careful investigation,” and he then speaks of a document bearing the date “Era 1295” (A.D. 1257), in which Fernando Dominguez and a brother of his sell to Petrus Petri, a priest, and to his brother Michaeli Petri, certain estates in Miguela (in Lugo). “The fact that the names mentioned in this document are found engraved on the stones of Cambre,” he adds, “is worthy of our attention; and was not Petrus Petri the celebrated architect of the Cathedral of Toledo?” Petrus Petri died in 1291, so there is no reason why he should not have been in Galicia in 1257. There is no indication, however, in the epitaph of Petrus Petri, that he was a priest.

Lamperez has also compared the architecture of Cambre with that of Toledo, and is greatly struck with the similarity in the pavement of the apses and in their vaulting. “Might it not be possible,” he ventures to suggest “that Petrus Petri was a Gallegan, and a pupil of the great Mateo? Petrus Petri may have studied the Gothic vaulting of Mateo in the PÓrtico de Gloria (which is among the earliest Gothic vaulting in that part of Spain), and he may then have tried his ‘prentice hand’ in the church at Cambre. A little later he may have given immense development to his plan in building the girola of Toledo.... If this could but be proved,” continues Lamperez, “we should then know for a certainty that Petrus Petri was a Spaniard, and we should be able to explain how he came to adapt the French Gothic style in the development of Spanish Art.”

Every few hours an omnibus drawn by two pairs of horses leaves the Plaza del Campo at Betanzos for Puentedeume and Ferrol, the latter town being reached in five hours. Puentedeume lies in a beautiful valley surrounded by vine-clad hills, and the whole journey is through delightful Gallegan scenery, while on the way a good view is obtained of the ruined castle of the noble family of Andrade. Borrow visited Ferrol from CoruÑa by sea, and he thus describes his first view of its wonderful harbour: “We were in one of the strangest places imaginable—a long and narrow passage overhung on either side by a stupendous barrier of black and threatening rocks. The line of the coast was here divided by a natural cleft, yet so straight and regular that it seemed not the work of chance but design. The water was dark and sullen and of immense depth. This passage, which is about a mile in length, is the entrance to a broad basin, at whose farther extremity stands the town of Ferrol.”

Ferrol has been for centuries the great Arsenal of Spain; the tremendous three-deckers and long frigates destroyed at Trafalgar were built there. The present fortifications were erected between 1769 and 1774. Pitt is reported to have remarked that if England possessed a port on her coast equal to Ferrol, the British Government would cover it with a strong wall of silver. During his Ministry Pitt sent an expedition to take Ferrol, and when fifteen thousand English soldiers disembarked there without warning on April 25, 1800, they found the place quite unprepared for war and very badly provisioned. “They were nevertheless obliged,” say Spanish historians, “to re-embark, but not before they had learned that Ferrol was a difficult place to blockade.”

The arsenal of Ferrol was at the period the finest, not only in Spain, but in all Europe. It came into existence before the reign of Philip II. Ferdinand VI. and Charles III. gave great impetus to the perfection of its hydraulic works, which for extent, magnificence, and solidity had not their equal. The tower has on its walls the following inscription:—

“The misery and degradation of modern Spain,” says Borrow, “are nowhere so strikingly manifested as at Ferrol. Yet even here there is much to admire, ... the Alameda is planted with nearly a thousand elms, of which almost all are magnificent trees, and the poor Ferolese, with the genuine spirit of localism so prevalent in Spain, boast that their town contains a better public walk than Madrid.” And of the naval arsenal he wrote: “I have seen the royal dockyards of Russia and England, but for grandeur of design and costliness of execution they cannot for a moment compare with those wonderful monuments of the bygone naval pomp of Spain.” He then informs his readers that the oblong basin, which is surrounded by a granite mole, is capacious enough to permit a hundred first-rates to lie conveniently in ordinary. In connection with this, let us read a paragraph from a Madrid correspondent which appeared in the Daily Telegraph for April 18, 1907: “It is practically certain that the Arsenal at Ferrol will, under a contract with the Treasury, be handed over to a private company. I have good reason to believe that the industry will be placed in the hands of an English firm. Negotiations for concluding the contract have already been set on foot. The firm which leases the factory will be allowed full liberty for developing the industry, but it will be under obligation to build ships and carry out other work for the State on favourable terms. In this manner Ferrol will be converted into a great naval factory, which will be able to compete with other shipyards, on account of the abundance of raw material, coal and iron, in the immediate vicinity. It is an open secret that Germany desired to be the favoured Power, and that German shipbuilders made certain proposals. These, however, were declined; and should the matter be finally carried through, it will be found that the enterprise has been placed in English hands.”

How sad it seems that Spain has not sufficient energy to rehabilitate her own excellent handiwork! An Englishman who travelled in the Peninsula in 1810 wrote: “The Spaniards are brave, acute, patient, and faithful, but all their characteristics are insulated, all their exertions are individual. They have no idea of combining, either publicly or privately, in a manner to call forth their respective talents and render every one useful to the common cause. The Germans may be said to combine too much and the Spaniards not at all.”[290] Yet Spain was once at the head of the cultured nations of Europe.