English-speaking travellers in Galicia (I) : Spanish Galicia, by Aubrey F.G. Bell

Excerpts from the book Spanish Galicia by Scottish professor and writer Aubrey F.G. Bell (1922)

    

Galicia, which now seems so peaceful and remote, cannot be dimissed as a country which has had no history. It has frequently been the scene of bitter feuds and warfare. In the early centuries of the Christian era it produced men of great fame: Prudentius, Priscillian, the early Latin chroniclers Paulus Orosius and Idatius, and in the ninth century, after the discovery of the body of St. James at Padrón in 812, it became in a sense the centre of Europe. Thousands of foreign pilgrims yearly made their way to «Sent Jamez in Galiz», who attracted men of all nations ans stations -poets, penitens, saints and kings- to his shrine at Compostela [...]  It is not, however, in a few pages that one can review the history of Galicia. Its pleasant land hospitable bays enticed friend and foe alike, but the Normans proved less sucessful on this coast in the ninth century than had earlier the Greeks and Phoenicians. Sucessive invasions by land and sea brought the most heterogeneous elements into the country, and the great Santiago pilgrimages continued this cosmopolitanism.

   Yet, in spite of raids and turmoil, Galicia was the corner of the Peninsula in which lyric poetry chiefly flourished [...] But a century before the birth of Chaucer a school of lyric poetry arose in Galicia, of which some exquisite remnants, fresh now as when they were written, have been preserved for us in the Cancioneiro da Vaticana, discovered half a century ago in the Vatican Library. The centre of this school was at Santiago de Compostela. This migt seem to indicate that it was the result of the cosmopolitan influence of the pilgrimages, but practically all critics are now agreed as to the indigenous character of part of this fascinant poetry [...] As Portugal gradually separated itself from the mother country a new language was formed from the Galician and survives in modern Portuguese. Galician lyric poetry imposed itself throughout Spain during two centuries, and King Alfonso the Learned composed in Galician his celebrated Cantigas de Santa Maria [...]

      

The traveller should perhaps not expect of the serious, hard-working Galicians the innate courtesy of the high-bred Castilians or the more superficial attractions of the butterfly Andalusians, but he will be helped on his way by many an act of true kindliness. Certainly they are very lovable and human, and having great gifts and a determined will, they are likely to make their influence more and more felt in the old world and in the new.  [...]

Ferreirós brook at Courel mountains (Photo by Guillermo Díaz Aira)

Galicia has been called the Switzerland of Spain, but it has really little or nothing of Switzerland and -apart from the Irish characteristics of its inhabitants- might more accurately be described as a mixture of Cumberland or Scotland with Italy or Greece. Certainly it has a most various and entrancing beauty, a quiet charm which captivates the fancy and inclines even the foreigner to morriña [homesickness] when he leaves it. It is a land rich in springs and rivers, and most of the rivers, the Miño, the Sil, the Tambre, Mandeo, Lerez, Ulla, Limia, Avia and a score of others, are of fascinating beauty, while the smaller streams, flowing through granite, are a succession of green transparent pools and rushing falls. [...]

  The colouring of the country is delicate and lovely, its outlines soft and charming; its bays and harbours are excellent, the beauty of its rias is strange and exquisite. But it also contains vestiges of ancient races and ruins of famous buildings which make it one of the most interesting parts of Spain. There are many castros (burrows) and earth mamoas (tumuli). There are also many dolmens and some cromlechs, but the existence of menhirs is more doubtful. There are also logan or moving stones. In many of the mountains great pillars of granite look as if they been thrown into the air and poised themselves marvellously as they fell. The granite slabs which so delightfully hedge the fields in many parts of Galicia are no doubt a reminiscence of the prehistoric buildings so common in all Celtic countries. [...] 

 

  The architecture of Galicia offers a wide and fascinating field of study. Galicia, with its usual conservatism, clung to the Romanesque style long after it had been abandoned in other parts of Europe. The cloisters of some cathedrals and convents are truly magnificent [...]
   Galicia rivals Catalonia in the beauty of its sculpture. The details of the capitals are often of amazing variety and loveliness, and the statues on many a church façade are as full of life as those os Santiago's Pórtico de la Gloria. The same lifelike expression animates the wood-carving throughout Galicia : the statues in the church of the Convent of Celanova, in Lugo Cathedral, at San Martín (Santiago), Tuy Cathedral and many other churches are a joy and a possession for ever. Galicia is in fact -albeit a fact rarely realized- as remarkable for its architecture and sculpture as for its natural scenery.