Galicia

“ THINGS SEEN Galicia is a land of sharp contrasts, and the things seen include sights which cannot be witnessed in any other country within such easy reach of London. The bullock-cart creaks by the side of the railway, the peasant with a Roman plough turns up the soil within sound of the electrical machinery of a corn-mill, the swift motor-car rushes past the old-world diligence on the highway, and the incandescent burner or electric lamp keeps company with the ancient candle. ”

“ Foaming and tearing its way between dark gorges, broadening here and there into smiling little valleys, the mountains terraced almost to their distant summits with mere steps upon which crops are raised, the river passes through infinite phases of beauty. But the towns, and even villages, are few and far between in these wild regions, and the suave and beautiful inland bays, with the sweet valleys and soaring sierras that surround them, will form for visitors the main attractions of Galicia. ”

“ South America, with its wide prairies under a merciless sun, its wild and savage mountains where one may travel for days together without finding a sign of human life, is very different from populous Galicia with its gentle, smiling scenery, its mountains whose slopes are veritable gardens, its innumerable springs, its rias and its rivers, its vines and its orchards. ”

“ From the day when they can support any burden at all the females of Galicia are taught that to them is given the conveyance of any article, however big and clumsy, which is not too big for a human being to grapple with. Nothing more astonishing can be seen in Galicia than the size and weight of some of the loads which the women carry on their heads, and frequently a woman hurries along under a burden which a Billingsgate or Covent Garden porter would refuse to have planted on his crown. ”

“ High up among the mountains the peasants breed large herds of cattle, which graze upon the fertile plains and slake their thirst in the crystal water of the running brooks. “As one travels through Galicia,” wrote a monk of Osera in the seventeenth century, “one experiences at every mile—nay, at every step, let me say—a change of air, a change of sky, and a change of scene sufficient to create the impression that one has entered another country. ”

“ Galicia of the twentieth century has inherited from Galicia of the Middle Ages poetry, sculpture, and architecture, each of which, in its own line, is absolutely unrivalled. These offer a wide and fascinating field of research to all those who seek to understand the civilisation of that period in the world’s history. The architecture of Galicia can be said to be exclusively Christian, for Moorish influence, which, penetrating into every other part of Spain, mingled itself with Christian art and produced what Spaniards cell el estilo mudejar, never gained any footing in this province. ”

“ Nearest of all the Iberian peninsula to our own land, the ancient kingdom of Galicia is as well-nigh unknown to us as any section of Europe. As far back as mankind's memory carries it has been Spain's "last ditch." Up into this wild mountain corner of the peninsula retreated in its turn each subdued race as conqueror after conqueror swept over the land,--the aboriginal Iberians before the Celts, the Celtiberians before the coast-hugging Phoenicians and Carthaginians, these before the omniverous Romans, followed as the centuries rolled on by Vandal, Suevi, Goth and Moor. ”

“ The whole scene is wonderful and impressive, and the country has the great merit of being almost untravelled by and unknown to ordinary tourists.
From Sobroso's solitude you walk back to the high road where your motor-car or Spanish cab awaits you and resume your journey, or, being untroubled by thoughts of time or vehicles, walk onward in the strangely fascinating twilight of Galicia. You pass the peasant women, and they smile and murmur "Adios," and instinctively you raise your hat in recognition of the salutation. ”

“ We cannot study the past of a spot so full of human interest as Galicia without some gain; we cannot study the physical beauties of the Spanish Switzerland without being transported for a time to those mountains and valleys that the Gallegans love so passionately, to those limpid streams and those beautiful rias. The mind needs change of air just as the body, and a few hours spent in that distant corner of Spain will, I trust, have been as refreshing to the mind of the reader as a few months spent in travelling and studying them were to the writer of this volume. ”

“ The beautiful hills and valleys of Galicia inspire her children with such a wild and passionate love of home as I have never met with elsewhere. Emigrants from all countries suffer more or less from home-sickness, but it is only the emigrants of Galicia who die of it. Yes, many and many a Gallegan peasant has died of sadness because he could not return to his native land. ”

“ Rich and poor alike repeat her verses to express their deepest and most tender thoughts; there is not a Gallegan who does not quote her, not a peasant girl who does not love her name. All Galicia’s sorrows find an echo in her poems, and her sorrow of sorrows, the pain of parting, the anguish of absence, the throb of home-sickness—the sorrow of emigration, is felt in almost every line. [197]
Rosalia’s lyrics are sweet and simple idyls of Galicia’s pastoral life. As we read them we wander among the green valleys and beside the clear waters of her myriad brooks ”

“ GALICIA is the least known and the least written about of all the little kingdoms that go to the making of Spain. Her boundaries have been greatly reduced since the days when the Romans divided the Peninsula into five provinces and called one of them Galicia. In the fourth and fifth centuries, when the Sueves and the Vandals poured into Spain, they made Galicia their centre, and their kingdom extended into what is now the kingdom of Portugal, while Braga, now a Portuguese town, was for a long time the residential city of their kings. ”

“ Two of Spain’s greatest living archæologists, Villa-Amil y Castro and Lopez Ferreiro, are sons of Galicia; and “the best authoress that Spain has produced during the present century,” [308] Doña Emilia Pardo Bazán, is Galicia’s daughter. So much for the stupidity of the Gallegans.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Fare thee well, Galicia! Thou art a land where railways have preceded roads, and where motor-cars have arrived before trains; thou art a land whose peasants are oppressed by bad government, usury, and their own crass ignorance ”

“ Every step of land visible from Noya is cultivated, every peasant is a proprietor. Yes, I had begun to understand the devotion of the Gallegans to their beautiful native land. Who would not love passionately so sweet a birthplace? Even the Russian loves his steppe, where the scene never changes for thousands of miles. In Galicia, every nook, every crag, every peak, every valley has a distinctive character that is all its own, with its own peculiar beauty. Galicia’s cottage homes are of granite, they last for many generations ”

“ The Central Junta, upon the deliverance of Galicia, addressed one of their animated proclamations to the inhabitants. “People of Galicia,” they said, “upon seeing you fall into the power of the enemy without resistance, your naval ports and arsenals occupied by them, and so powerful and important a province subjected from sea to sea, indignation and grief made your country break out in cries of malediction and reproach, like a mother who complains to heaven and earth of the degradation of a daughter in whom alone she had confided. ”

“ Thence also there came those pious caravans who, attracted by the throngs of French, Belgians, Germans, Hungarians, Poles, juglares and troubadours, who animated the streets and palaces of Compostela, the Holy City of the West, the emporium and centre of a powerful movement which carried multitudes of clever men from Galicia to occupy the professional chairs of the most celebrated schools of the Middle Ages, and multitudes of inspired Gallegan poets to sing before the most splendid courts of Europe. ”

“ Geographically, racially and socially, Galicia is a part of Russia. Galicia is a preponderatingly agricultural land and possesses the densest agricultural population in Europe. Modern industry is relatively little developed, its place being held to a great extent by the domestic system of industry. The contrast between the large and small estates is sharper here than perhaps in any other section of Europe. The Polish nobility, in whose hands the large estates are mostly found, are the ruling social and political, as well as economic, power in Galicia. ”

“ Boundaries of Galicia—Spurs of the Pyrenees—The Rias—Exuberant vegetation—Herds of cattle—Rivers—The “River of Oblivion”—The Miño and the Sil—Sword-making—Ptolemy—The first map—France and geographical literature—The finest harbours in Europe—Columbus and Galicia—Rich in relics of the past
GALICIA is bounded on the north by the Bay of Biscay, on the south by Portugal, and on the east by the provinces of Asturias and Leon. This province is the most westerly and at the same time the most northerly part of Spain, and her cape—Finisterre—was once the uttermost part of the Roman Empire. ”

“ Betanzos, an old-world town near Corunna, is associated with this thousand-year-old belief, and one of its quaint thoroughfares is called the Street of the Hundred Maidens.
Galicia is a land of hills. They are seen as soon as the coast is observed, and no journey can be made without beholding them. The hills are not high enough to be called mountains, but their altitude in many cases gives them a noble and dignified appearance. Richard Ford called Galicia the Switzerland of Spain ”

“ At the very most northwestern tip of Spain is the region of Galicia, which everybody thought was the end of the world before Columbus showed them it wasn't. People in Galicia call themselves "Gallegos," and they live in a country of rocky seacoasts, where the ocean pokes long fingers called "rias" back into green hills and fog rolls in almost every day. In Galicia and the neighboring region of Asturias, fathers earn their living by fishing or by farming, and mothers make all the clothes for [Pg 26] their families from cloth they weave themselves. ”

“ Galicia has from time immemorial produced more great intellects, more literary men, and more poets, than any other province in the Peninsula. Not only can Galicia boast of having a first Golden Age and a second Golden Age,{357} but she can also produce a long list of glorious names reaching right up to the present day. ”

“ The grace and ease with which these handsome girls balanced their buckets upon their heads, without the aid of their hands, called forth my unceasing admiration throughout my stay in Galicia. I never tired of watching them as they passed along the narrow, uneven, and badly paved streets, with their rapid and swinging gait; it was an art they had learned in their babyhood. Women going and coming from the market make use of their heads, where their husbands and brothers would of their shoulders. ”

“ Clear and distinct her poetic personality stands out from amongst all the rest; she has given the impulse, and others are already following in the path her genius has so clearly indicated, and a literary movement has been set on foot which may possibly terminate in a third Golden Age for Galicia.
Is it necessary for the complete nationalisation of France that the language of Provence should die? Is it indispensable for the welfare of Belgium that the Flemish tongue should disappear? ”

“ The earliest documentary information about Galicia comes to us from the Romans, from the writings of Julius Cæsar, Strabo, and Pliny the Younger, from Justin, Silicus Italicus, and Asclepiades. The last-named writer speaks of Greek colonies in Galicia and Lusitania, but many Spanish writers have discredited their existence, and Barros Sivelo affirms that there is not a single monument in Galicia testifying to the Greeks having settled there. ”

“ Luis would exclaim. “If Galicia should declare itself a canton, not even the evil one would stay there. Make up your mind to one thing: in Spain, the smaller the governing entities—is that the right word?—the worse they are. ”

“ Galicia is by nature the richest province in Spain, but the inhabitants are very stupid, and know not how to turn the blessings which surround them to any account; but as a proof of what may be made out of Galicia, see how rich the Catalans become who have settled down here and formed establishments. There are riches all around us, upon the earth and in the earth.
Benedict.—Ow yaw, in the earth, that is what I say. There is much more treasure below the earth than above it. ”

“ There are many devoted Gallegans who compare their beloved territory to Finland, to Ireland and Hungary, and are never tired of saying that self-government alone could restore to her the prosperity that has forsaken her shores. They feel that as long as she is governed at a distance and by strangers she can never hope to raise her head.
Less troubled by invaders, less influenced by the Moors than the rest of Spain, Galicia at one time became the centre in which was propagated the purest of Spain’s lyric poetry ”

“ Galicia, 1, an old province (1,919) of Spain, formerly a kingdom in the NW. corner of it, fronting the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic; now divided into the four minor provinces, Coruña, Lugo, Orense, Pontevedra; the county is hilly, well watered, fertile, and favoured with a fine climate, but cultivated only very partially; some mining is carried on. 2, A crownland (6,607) in the NE. of Austria, between Russia and the Carpathians; the inhabitants are mainly Slavs, but there is a goodly number of Jews, Germans, Poles, &c. ”