English translation

joyas de galicia

92

THE CONSECRATION OF A MASTERPIECE: THE REPRODUCTION OF THE PORTICO OF GLORY IN THE CAST COURTS OF THE VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM (pages 16-19) The scarce echo that the Portico of Glory had until its “discovery” in the mid-19th century is particularly striking; this is explained, among other factors, because until recently it was a space with a special consideration within the cathedral, which was only opened, exceptionally, for certain uses and solemnities.

The origin, development and execution of the project of making a reproduction of the Portico of Glory have a curious history, which, from England, takes place between the decade of the 1830s and 1870s and which had a fundamental importance for the consecration of the Portico, “one of the great glories of Christian art”. The installation of the replica in the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria & Albert Museum, was the culmination of this process.

Shortly after its creation in 1857, the South Kensington Museum undertook international missions to select the most outstanding pieces of world heritage. For this, John Charles Robinson toured Spain on several campaigns, with the dual mission of acquiring original pieces for the Museum's collections and proposing those casts of particularly important works of art. Robinson visited Compostela in 1865 and was dazzled by the Portico of Glory, which he praised in his writings, stating that “as a work of art, its title is well deserved. I have no hesitation in affirming that I consider it incomparably the most important sculptural and ornamental monument of its time”; at the same time he insists, on several occasions, on the convenience of making a life-size copy of it, destined for the rooms dedicated to presenting the best of universal art through reproductions. As those in London were also convinced, the formalities were relatively swift for the time and, barely a year after his visit, in April 1866, the Chapter agreed to the request for permission to carry out the casting of the Portico, imposing a series of conditions to guarantee the conservation of the work and the supervision of the work, which would be directed by the prestigious specialist of Italian origin, Doménico Brucciani, who had extensive experience in carrying out this type of work for the most important British museums. The casting was carried out, with great diligence, between August and October 1866; in the midst of an unusual expectation in the city, not without some controversy and division between those who saw in its realization recognition of the artistic values of the work and those who saw dark motives in the British interest in the monument. The chronicles of the time bear witness to all this, as does the act by which the Chapter and the Museum exchanged gifts to commemorate the completion of the project; thus, in the Victoria & Albert is preserved, among other materials, the silver showcase, with the image of Santiago Caballero, which the Chapter gave to Brucciani in recognition of his dedication; and, in turn, in the Cathedral Museum's collection is the electrotype of a Parisian Tazza given by the English delegation. Satisfaction, then, on both sides and no mention of possible damage to the work; on the contrary, the report undertaken for the Chapter by the painter Juan José Cancela from Santiago de Compostela is clear in this respect and points out the virtues of the work carried out. It was not until several decades later that the first criticisms of the possible deterioration of the Portico caused by the casting were made, although always in the realm of hypotheses and without evident proof, either in terms of the polychromy or the structure. In the course of the recent restoration of the Portico, a complete study of the polychromy was carried out which identified the different layers applied throughout its history and which also served to confirm that the careful casting carried out by the team contracted by the South Kensington Museum had caused little damage to the work. Cancela was right, therefore, when he certified, at its conclusion, that everything was in order and that the works had not damaged the work, the main condition required, in 1866, by the Cathedral Chapter, to authorise them. The casting of the Portico was, from the beginning, highly regarded at the South Kensington Museum, although the lack of adequate space meant that, in the early days, only a few fragments were exhibited. Finally, in October 1873, the Architectural Courts were inaugurated in London, with the complete reproduction of the Portico of Glory as one of its main protagonists, as reflected in the literature of the time. Thus, six centuries after its creation by the genius Master Mateo, the Portico became part of the Temple of Art and, with it, of the select group of masterpieces of the history of universal art. ᴥ

Bugatti, Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Mercedes, Alfa Romeo, BMW... All the important makes in automotive history are present in Manuel Ferreira’s personal collection of historic cars, a businessman from Vigo. Passionate about motor racing, for twenty years he has kept more than a hundred cars that are authentic treasures, some due to their exclusivity, others due to their legend, historical relevance or successes on circuits and rallies. And all have a story behind them.

Nobody knows these stories better than

dream cars (pages 22-25)

joyas de galicia

93

Antonio Alfonso, a great friend of Ferreira and a collector himself, who has been in charge of bringing a good part of these works of art to Galicia. “All of these cars work perfectly and, in fact, they are taken out on the road quite frequently,” he explains. Maintenance is one of the great difficulties of historic cars. In the warehouse where Ferreira keeps his collection, they are all connected to an electrical system that prevents the batteries from degrading, as is not ideal for these cars never to be started up. Among the cars there is a splendid Lamborghini Countach, a Mercedes 540K Roadster from the 1930s (one can imagine how such a machine must have stood out at the time), an Aston Martin DB5 like James Bond's or a very elegant Mercedes 300 SL, known as gull wings due to the unmistakable way the doors open; and a unique edition Pegaso, made in Barcelona. Here we also find representatives of the early years of the industry, such as a legendary Ford Model T from 1914, the doyen of the collection; or much more modest pieces, but with great historical significance, such as the Biscúter number 100,000, which the factory gave to Franco.

In the competition cars section, rallying wins hands down, with winning models such as the Lancia Delta Integrale Martini, an Audi Quattro that took Stig Blomqvist to the podium, a beautiful Ford GT40 winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in which you can imagine Steve McQueen.

It is difficult to determine the exact value of each of these historical pieces. Alfonso notes that probably the most expensive car of all those found here is a 1965 Alfa Romeo TZ II Auto Delta. Only 13 units were made and probably only 9 are still in circulation, which raises its price to three or four million euros. A model, also from the 1960s is the legendary Ferrari GTO, in a version that is not from a regular series, costs a little less: an original of those that came out of the Maranello factory can cost up to 60 million euros, but this one costs about two or three. The difference is that it is a unit assembled by its designer, the engineer Allegretti, after his retirement: “He only built three, and his son confirmed to us that this one is authentic." ᴥ

luciano calvo - chairman of grupo calvo (pages 44-46) “A family business is more agile when it comes to making decisions”

Behind the desk of his office in the main factory of Grupo Calvo in Galicia, Luciano Calvo (Carballo, 1948) has a shelf with a mix of family photos and samples of historical products from the canning company he heads. It is a good example of how family and company blend in its life history: it was founded on the small factory that was the origin of what is now a multinational with a presence in 65 countries, its own fleet of factory and transport ships and hundreds of workers and partners.

What do you remember of those early days when your father headed the project?

The company that my father founded in the 1940s was, practically an artisanal business until the mid-1950s,. In summer it was dedicated to fish and in winter, as there was no fish, my father bought beans and distributed them in Spain and Cuba. It was already an important business that provided many jobs. In the mid-1950s my father invented a canning machine that gave us the final push.

What do you think was the main breakthrough that allowed Calvo to get to where it is today?

We consider ourselves an innovative company, ever since my father, first with the canning machine and then with the round can, which we introduced in Spain. Then we were the first to sell in packs of three, which made things easier for consumers. We have more milestones in innovation: the line of healthy products that we opened with low-salt tuna, the first advertising campaign by a canning company on television?

What have been the worst moments?

They always coincide with economic crises and a slowdown in consumption. A major crisis was the emergence of so-called own brands. We had to fight hard to keep up.

What advantages, difficulties and responsibilities does a family business have over one that has less family roots?

It has its advantages. Our company is family-run, but highly professionalised. There are four family members in the company, the rest are professionals. The best thing is that we are more agile: an important decision is made quickly and we do not have to wait for a lot of meetings. The disadvantage is that, if you want to access capital to grow, you cannot sell your shares, like a normal company.

Do you think that companies should be involved in this way in the social, cultural and sporting life of the towns in which they are based?

I believe that if society gives to us, we have to give back. Consumers give us a lot and we have to help those who have a deficit, and our environment. It is almost an obligation, if you can, you have to contribute. ᴥ

the obelisco of a coruña (pages 54-58)

“Shall we meet at the Obelisco?” The people of A Coruña have taken the column that presides over the entrance to the Cantón Grande as a spatial reference for more than 126 years. But it is much more than a meeting point. The writer and journalist Julio Rodríguez Yordi elevated it to the category of “geographical and metaphysical centre of La Coruña.” And he was right. Since its creation, together with the Tower of Hercules it became the monument par excellence of the city of A Coruña.

joyas de galicia

94

Built in memory of the dignitary Linares Rivas, the Obelisco tells us about the main meteorological landmarks of the city, compiled by the Physics teacher of the institute, Acisclo Campano from Zamora, who left his mark on Pablo Picasso himself, a student of that school. That information gives it some informative utility. But these are past data, so in order to know the contemporary ones, measuring devices were installed, such as a barometer and a thermometer that were placed in the chamfers, and a weather vane that -together with the lightning rod- finished off the piece. And then, of course, the monument had to tell the time, or rather, the hours.

In September 1893, the project promotion committee, chaired by the banker Narciso Obanza, delivered the Obelisco project to the City Council, which approved it in its session on the 25th of the same month. The project was signed by Gabriel Vitini Alonso from Valladolid and cost 60,000. The public subscription only managed to raise 40,000. The brutal difference ended up being assumed by the builders of the two parts themselves, the sons of the accredited industrialist Baltasar Escudero, Saturnino and José.

The clock was commissioned from a prestigious manufacturer in the French town of Morez in the Jura region. Son of the prestigious watchmaker Louis Delphin Odobey Cadet, Paul Odobey (1851-1923) decided to open his own company (Paul Odobey Fils) in 1879, in competition with that of his father, in which his brothers also worked. The firm, which became one of the most powerful in France, remained in business until the early 1970s.

Work on the Obelisco began on 4 May 1894. The inauguration was originally scheduled for 9 September of that year, and appears in the festivities programme published by the City Council. This date underwent numerous changes. In fact, October came and the clocks had not even arrived. They did so at the end of that month. A cast frame awaited them in the workshops of Mr Ortiz, where, if all went well, the four spheres were to be fitted. The unpacking was done by the local watchmaker Emilio Vergne, in charge of managing this part of the work. He got a surprise: one of the spheres was broken on arrival due to an accident at Irun customs, so a new one had to be called for.

There have been countless interventions. To stick to the last decades, in 1982 it underwent a major repair, and in fact the watch was transferred to some workshops to treat it thoroughly; in 1990 one of the higher spheres was replaced; in 2002 all four were repaired, as one accumulated a delay of half an hour (it was attributed to the weight of the needles) and the others, between three and four minutes; in 2006 the clock stopped a couple of times in three days and it was published that it could be replaced, because 111 years of grit, storms and saltpeter had heavily damaged it. ᴥ

o burgo and the memory of

past battles (pages 14-15)

The cliché says that bridges unite. Sometimes, and for some, too much. This was verified during the so-called Spanish War of Independence, at the beginning of the 19th century, in which the Napoleonic armies blew up or damaged a great number of structures all over Galicia, fed up with the harassment of the local guerrillas; or the British, escaping from the Gauls. The bridge of O Burgo, which joins the municipalities of A Coruña and Culleredo, was another example, with the added attraction of its role in the mythicised retreat of the British troops commanded by Sir John Moore.

The story of the English retreat and the battle of Elviña has been told many times: pursued by the troops of the French Marshal Soult; at the beginning of 1809 the British faced a humiliating escape from Castile ending in the port of A Coruña. While waiting for their warships to be able to embark, they had to hold off Napoleon’s army outside A Coruña, where their commander, Moore, was mortally wounded. He is now buried in the romantically set gardens of San Carlos and he is a symbol of the city.

In this containment effort, Moore ordered a division of his army to cut off the historic bridge of O Burgo to prevent Soult's soldiers from crossing the fertile estuary on their way to A Coruña. In command of the division, General Paget accomplished his mission and blew up an entire arch of the historic viaduct on 12 January. Militarily, the strategy was profitable for the English, because it forced the enemy to have to make a huge detour and go up to Cambre to cross the river Mero and avoid problems in the silty, dangerous estuary. The bridge at O Burgo could not be repaired until the 15th, which gave them enough days to embark most of the British troops (and which cost Moore his life at Elviña on the 16th). Apparently both sides got what they wanted: the English escaped and the French took A Coruña. The local population lost out, condemned to months of hunger and hardship.

Originally from the 14th or 15th century, in its current version it has 11 semi-circular arches, of which the ones in the centre are original. Some more have been buried in the concrete of its banks. ᴥ

the archbishop's old bridge

(pages 20-21)

When the Archbishop's Bridge was built in Santiago, as it was called, the Marquis de Croix warned that it should be a structure of the greatest possible perfection and solidity, although he agreed with the city’s representative that a structure of great size was not necessary because, as it was not a royal road, it just had to guarantee the comfortable passage of one or two traditional carriages. Carlos Francisco de Croix initially hesitated between rebuilding the existing bridge, which was very deteriorated, or undertaking a new construction, so he had the engineer José Santos evaluate it and help him make the decision.

The work on the new bridge over the Sarela in El Carme neighbourhood was awarded by public tender for eight thousand reals and the conditions included the removal of all the materials from the old bridge, everything having to be cleared and cleaned, as Socorro Ortega Romero states in a study on the bridges of Compostela in the 18th century. It was formally completed in July 1759, although there are records of minor works in 1760, and also of the construction of the road from the bridge to Gaio hill in 1764. This was the culmination of an action promoted by the Marquis de Croix, who held the post of Captain General of Galicia for a decade.

Nowadays it is difficult to imagine the neighbourhood of Carme de Abaixo as an industrial area, but it was this at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, when numerous artisan leather tanning factories were progressively established on the banks of the Sarela, which coexisted with traditional agricultural and livestock farming activities. At certain times, twenty -five tanneries coexisted along the Sar and Sarela rivers, an activity in which Compostela became a national reference until the decline in the 20th century, when they began to close due to the coming together of causes such as the loss of the colonies or the civil war.

The enlargement of the chapel and construction of the Church of Carme de Abaixo began in 1760, shortly after the completion of the new bridge, although due to lack of funds these works went on for more than a century, until 1773. In 1864 the church was extended again. Some of the modifications made to the environment throughout its history were carried out because of the serious and frequent floods caused by river flooding. ᴥ

joyas de galicia

95

pedrido bridge (pages 28-29)

In the Betanzos estuary, between the municipalities of Paderne and Bergondo, is one of the most outstanding engineering works of the last century: the Pedrido Bridge. A project which began to be developed in the 1920s, when there was only a crossing by boat linking the two banks, where the pier on the bank of Paderne can still be found. Then a first proposal by the engineer Luciano Yordi Menchaca was started, but it was immediately replaced by the project drafted by César Villalba Granda in 1928. The work started five years later, but the outbreak of the civil war paralysed it, with the central span not being executed, and it was not taken up again until the 1940s.

The recovery of the works involved the introduction of one of the key figures in reinforced concrete construction: the engineer Eduardo Torroja Miret. Torroja undertook the completion of the bridge and modified Villalba's project in the central section, providing the solution that we see today: a cable-stayed arch with a 75 metre span and 12.50 metre deflection, with a lower deck, suspended by means of pendulums spaced 3.65 metres apart. The clarity and rationality of the whole, the assumption of the existing constructions from the previous proposal and its natural, coherent incorporation into the project and its monumental, scenic dimension on the horizon of the estuary make this bridge, which was inaugurated in April 1943, one of the most relevant works of its time.

The bridge transformed the laborious journey by row boat into a permanent, comfortable connection between the two banks of the estuary. Together with the most immediate link, there is also a largescale link, as the bridge finds its territorial justification in the development that supports the road linking the cities of Coruña and Ferrol, avoiding the journey along the bottom of the estuary and generating a new metropolitan mobility, in the dawn of that “City of the Estuaries” that, since the middle decades of the twentieth century, was being formed along the Gulf of Ártabro.

In addition to these values, which integrate the rural and the urban, the Pedrido Bridge also stands out as a heritage element due to its shape, indebted to modernity. ᴥ

pontevea, against nature and

humans (pages 38-39)

The old bridge of Pontevea, about ten kilometres south of Compostela, is a good example of how time hounds these infrastructures. The relentless flow of the river Ulla, which rises between the municipalities of Teo and A Estrada, has been undermining it for centuries. But it has been the history of humans that has caused the most upset to a happily restored giant.

The actual age of the current bridge is not very clear. The local historian Manuel Reimóndez Portela places it at around the 15th century, the time it would have been built to replace a Roman predecessor that saved the Ulla for the old Antonine Itinerary. The first unmistakable mention is due, however, to a disaster: in 1571 a flood left it badly damaged, and the same thing happened to it at the beginning of the 18th century. In fact, the history of the old “Ponte Abea” is that of a resigned resistance against the Ulla's attacks, and whoever has passed through the area after several days of rain will know what this means. It recovered from the 18th century damage thanks to a refurbishment attributed to the last great architect of the Baroque from Santiago de Compostela, Miguel Ferro Caaveiro.

However in the 19th century Pontevea began its fight against an enemy that was more tenacious and destructive than the floods: humans. During the War of Independence and like so many other Galician bridges (Ledesma, upstream, Ponte Sampaio, on the Lérez...), it witnessed bloody clashes between French troops and armed peasants. In the scuffle, one of the arches was blown up. The French hastily rebuilt it with wood, and it was patched up in this way until the middle of the century, when one of its most important reforms was undertaken.

The most critical moment was in the middle of Franco's developmentalism. Several options for widening the bridge were proposed in 1953. Some of them were aggressive: increasing the platform with concrete, or demolishing the upper part to take advantage of the pilasters. Others were even more brutal, such as tearing it down and building a new one. Fortunately, a fourth option was chosen: to build a modern viaduct a few metres upstream and preserve the old bridge, restoring its original appearance. ᴥ

the natural entrance to the

south of compostela(pages 74-75)

Sar is almost a small village in the heart of Compostela. Although it is only a few hundred metres from the centre, its pace still seems much more leisurely. Perhaps it is the vegetation of Brañas, a natural space miraculously kept safe from the voracity of property developers. Perhaps, it is the influence of the river itself, which functions as a psychological frontier. For centuries, the Sar Bridge was the best way to cross it; now it retains its modest elegance and remains a transit zone for traffic in the area.

Three medieval arches span the river in an area that is not particularly deep, as can be seen in the driest periods of the summer. Here the Sar is almost a river that has just emerged, as it starts a few kilometres upstream, in Bando, from where it almost clandestinely meanders to occupy the centre of Brañas, which covers a large space between the Multiusos and O Restollal. The bridge retains all its solidity and has undergone several modifications, the last of which has freed its surroundings to make it more accessible to walkers, who become legions of walkers here on fine days.

The Sar Bridge was the natural entrance to the city for those pilgrims who reached it by the Vía de la Plata (Silver Way), on the great Way of St. James from the south. It was also the last obstacle of a leading commercial route established since the Middle Ages until not a hundred years ago, which covered the wine sellers who came to the city from O Ribeiro and other wine-growing areas of Ourense.

Proof of the importance of the road is, on the one hand, the solid three-span bridge and, on the other, what remains of the medieval road a little further along the south bank of the river. The road must have existed since Roman times. What survives preserves a Portuguese-style chapacuña cobblestone, dating from the 18th century. It was in the Age of Enlightenment when a major effort was made to improve these communications, and in this context, an attempt was made to improve access to Compostela. In fact, a report from 1759 is still preserved, written by the architect Lucas Ferro Caaveiro, describing his inspection of the area. ᴥ

Jael Joyería destina el 20% de las ventas de esta colección a la Asociación de Ayuda a Niños Oncológicos de Galicia