Village
Betanzos is a city of about 13,500 inhabitants at the head of its ria, on a hill of the peninsula formed by the rivers Mandeo and Mendo as they join. Capital of its comarca, it was known as Betanzos de los Caballeros and went on to become the capital of one of the seven provinces of the former Kingdom of Galicia after obtaining the title of city from Henry IV in 1465. The city has stood since 1219 on the old castro of Untia; its history is linked to the House of Andrade, whose greatest figure, Fernán Pérez de Andrade O Bo, drove much of its construction in the 14th century. The medieval quarter, a historic-artistic site since 1970, preserves Gothic buildings such as San Francisco and Santa María do Azougue, and every 16 August it releases its famous paper balloon into the sky.
Monument
The church of San Francisco de Betanzos is a Gothic building constructed in the second half of the 14th century through the patronage of Fernán Pérez de Andrade, O Boo, who rebuilt the earlier 13th-century monastery. With a single nave, polygonal apse and ribbed vault, it retains Gothic rose windows and stained glass, figured corbels and, on the vault's ribs, angels playing instruments, one of them a bagpipe. It holds sixteen Andrade tombs, among them that of Fernán Pérez, resting on a bear and a boar - emblems of the lineage - with the knight's recumbent effigy, guarded by four angels, a forerunner of medieval Galician funerary sculpture. A Franciscan convent once stood alongside it, abandoned after the 1835 disentailment and burned in 1936. It was declared a Monumento Nacional (a former Spanish heritage-protection designation, later replaced by Bien de Interés Cultural) in 1919.
Monument
A Gothic church built between the late 14th and early 15th centuries, at the initiative of the counts of Andrade, over an earlier Romanesque church, beside the old market square from which it takes its name, since azougue meant market. It has a basilical plan with three naves and a heptagonal main chapel; its main façade displays the Adoration of the Magi, while the north portal depicts the Last Judgement, with Saint Michael weighing the soul of a just man. In a 2022 restoration, an arcosolium with stone reliefs concealing a burial with mural painting was found behind the altarpiece of San Pedro, the only one of its kind preserved in Betanzos. Together with Santiago and San Francisco, it forms the trio of medieval churches that crowns the old town. A Monumento Histórico-Artístico (a former Spanish heritage-protection designation, later replaced by Bien de Interés Cultural) since 1944.
Monument
A parish church of Romanesque origin rebuilt in the 14th century in Gothic style under the patronage of the Andrade family; alongside it stands the 16th-century Torre do Reloxo, one of the most recognisable outlines of the old town of Betanzos.
Monument
Of the 15th-century medieval wall four Gothic gates survive: a Porta do Hórreo, o Arco da Ribeira or do Cristo, o Arco da Ponte Nova and o Arco da Ponte Vella, witnesses of the enclosure that surrounded the town, a historic-artistic site since 1970.
Monument
A convent complex built between the 16th and 18th centuries, with 17th-century Baroque chapels dedicated to the Souls, the Rosary and the Soledad; since 1983 it has housed the Museo das Mariñas, with medieval sarcophagi and an apostolate from the school of Rubens.
Nature
One of the twelve rías that make up the Galician Rías Altas and one of the four that form the Golfo Ártabro, in the north of the province of La Coruña, bathing the municipalities of Sada, Bergondo, Betanzos, Paderne, Miño and Puentedeume. It rises in the city of Betanzos at the confluence of the Mandeo and Mendo rivers, runs through marshes and rush beds for about eight kilometres, and then joins the ría de Ares at punta Carboeira. Battered by the oil spills of the tankers Urquiola in 1975 and Mar Egeo in 1992, it retains some of Galicia's finest beaches, such as those of Perbes and Playa Grande, in Miño, or that of Gandarío, in Bergondo; its marshes and intertidal flats are protected as the Betanzos-Mandeo Special Conservation Area, within the Natura 2000 network.
Curiosity
Fernán Pérez de Andrade, known as the Good, was a Galician knight born around 1326 or 1330 and who died in 1397, fond of hunting, poetry and books of chivalry, who acted as patron and protector of the Church even as he seized its property whenever it suited him. After backing Henry of Trastámara in his struggle against his half-brother Peter I of Castile, he rose, with the Trastámara victory, to the rank of great lord in Galicia. His Gothic tomb, supported by a bear and a boar, emblems of his lineage, shows him as a recumbent knight in armour, with hunting scenes on the sides recalling his fondness for the chase; it was moved in 1782 from the main chapel to the lower choir.
Curiosity
The Globo de Betanzos is an unmanned paper balloon that is raised every night of 16-17 August in honour of San Roque, patron saint of the city, with a decoration that its craftsmen keep secret until the moment of the flight. It is made of sixteen sheets of kraft paper glued with rye paste and reinforced with cotton tape, illustrated with humorous vignettes by local artists; it reaches 25 metres in height and 16 in diameter, and the air that lifts it is heated with straw and pressed paper soaked in oil. It is launched from the Plaza del Campo, using the Santo Domingo bell tower as an inflation platform; the first documented flight dates from 1814, and the present-day tradition goes back to 1875, when it was devised by the saddler Claudino Pita.
Curiosity
Encyclopaedic garden raised between 1893 and 1914 by the García Naveira brothers, indianos returned from Argentina — the initiative is attributed to the two brothers and, in particular, to Juan García Naveira — with underground grottoes, ponds, sculptures and reliefs that reproduced popes, emperors and wonders of the world, from the Panama Canal to the pyramids of Egypt; it came to occupy some 90,000 square metres and was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in February 2020.
Activity
A river festival of Betanzos held on 18 and 25 August, as part of the San Roque festivities: the betanceiros head for the campo dos Caneiros, on the banks of the río Mandeo, on foot, by car or in the traditional boats decked out for the occasion, and spend the day there amid music, dancing and wine, with fireworks at the end. It began in 1889 and was declared a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Nacional (Spain's official designation for festivals of special national tourist interest) in 1965. The festival is already reported in the nineteenth-century press, when the betanceiros, after the three great days of San Roque and the release of the silk-paper balloon, would go by boat to picnic on the banks of the Mandeo. The romería is portrayed in the film 'Sabela de Cambados' (1949), by Ramón Torrado.
Activity
A three-day re-enactment of a medieval market in the old town of Betanzos, held on the second weekend of July since 1998, the year in which the tradition of the feira franca granted to the town by King Henry IV was revived, between 10 and 12 July: an annual thirty-day fair, free of taxes, to be held between 1 and 30 November under a charter of privilege dated in Cuéllar on 3 July 1467 and confirmed by the Catholic Monarchs in 1475. The historic quarter, declared a conjunto histórico-artístico (former Spanish heritage-protection category for historic urban ensembles, predecessor of the Bien de Interés Cultural) in 1970, takes back during the fair the name Betanzos dos Cabaleiros, evoking the walled town that Henry IV raised to city status in the fifteenth century. Today the streets are decked with banners, craft stalls are set up and medieval tournaments, falconry and archery displays and the burning of the witch are held, with attendance that has topped 150,000 visitors.
Nature
Where the Mandeo and the Mendo meet the estuary, marshes and rush beds spread out that form one of the wetlands of greatest value on the coast of A Coruña, included in the biosphere reserve declared by Unesco in 2013.
Historical milestone
In 1219 the population abandoned the site of Betanzos o Vello and settled on the castro of Untia, the hill between the Mandeo and the Mendo where today the historic centre and its belt of walls stand.
Historical milestone
Two devastating fires, in 1569 and in 1616, destroyed more than two hundred and sixty buildings within the walled enclosure. The later rebuilding explains much of the present appearance of its streets and arcades.
Food and drink
The Viño da Terra de Betanzos is a Galician protected geographical indication covering the table wines of the Betanzos wine-growing area, in the municipalities of Bergondo, Betanzos, Coirós, Miño and Paderne; it was regulated by an order of 8 November 2000. Betanzos was land of high wine production from the Middle Ages, with regulations as early as the 16th century governing the grape harvest, and the wine came to be exported to America; the crop nearly disappeared because of several plagues in the 19th century. Today it is a light, fruity, low-alcohol wine, in white and red varieties, served in the so-called loureiros, private cellars marked with a laurel branch, and its production is aimed mainly at self-consumption, which is why it is barely found for sale.
Food and drink
A potato omelette without onion and barely set, almost liquid in the centre, which is set only on the outside and served cut into tall portions. Its fame passed beyond the comarca until it became a type recognised throughout Spain.