Even Columbus knew it.

What was it then that Columbus knew? Well, of course that Galicia is the centre of the universe.

It appears that when he sailed across the ocean blue in 1492 he took with him Ribeiro wine. Well, he personally didn’t do so but the wine went on one of the boats.

Apparently a document was found quite by chance in 2006 in the Archivo de Simancas, a 16th century purpose-built archive building in Valladolid, which houses official Spanish documents from 1435 to 1834. According to this document an unnamed gallego priest took to La Española (Hispaniola), the first colony founded by Cristóbal Colón (our old friend Christopher Columbus), a couple of barrels of Ribeiro wine from Ribadavia.

There was some kind of dispute and the Almirante de la Mar Océana (yes, Chris Columbus himself) confiscated the wine. The priest’s complaint even reached the ears of Los Reyes Católicos themselves and Isabel and Fernando decreed that the Almirante de la Mar Océana had to give back the value of the wine to the priest’s heirs. What a palaver!!!

Well, just last week the monastery of San Clodio, in Leiro, Orense, birthplace of Ribeiro wine, was given a copy of the document with the Catholic Kings’ judgement as part of the Jornadas del Ribeiro celebrations. Ribeiro wine was already well known in the old world. Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quijote writer) apparently praised Ribadavia wine found in a Genoese tavern.

The marketing people, always on the look-out for a new tactic, hope to use this document as a way of promoting Ribeiro wine in the new world today, in other words hoping to conquer the American market.

Of course, Galicia had already figured in the stories of the voyages of Columbus. The Pinta, one of the three boats, exceedingly small to the modern eye, that made that historic journey was apparently nippier than the other two, the Niña and the Santa María. Consequently she made it back faster to Spain.

And where, you may ask, did she dock? Why, Baiona, of course, down the coast from here. On the 1st of March 1493, by all accounts, Baiona was the first place to receive the news about the new place on the other side of the ocean. In 1992, to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the discovery, replicas of the boats were built and repeated the journey. The replica of the Pinta, turned into a Columbus museum in 1999 can be visited in Baiona today.

Back in modern day Spain, Galicia is still making conquests. The Raíña Lupa art gallery in Barcelona has recently been voted the best art gallery in Cataluña. The very name of the gallery gives away its connections with Galicia.

One source of information tells me that la Raíña Lupa was the gallega queen of the wolves, a legendary character who tried to use her powers to oppose the introduction of Christianity in Galicia. She was also the embodiment of the struggle between good and evil, between order and chaos. Poucos son os galegos que non teñen oido falar da Raíña Lupa ou que non coñecen algunha tradición ou lenda relacionada con ela – very few gallegos have not heard of Raíña Lupa or don’t now some legend connected with her.

Another source gives us one of those legends, linking her to the Santiago de Compostela story. Four young men arrived in Galicia by boat bringing with them the body of a holy man. They tied their boat to a large stone, a pedrón, went looking for a place to bury the body and arrived at a large building on the top of a hill. When they banged on the door they were told that they would have to wait until morning to speak to the mistress, La Raíña Lupa.

Next morning, having been granted an audience with the queen, they requested a cart so they could carry their holy man to a place of burial. The queen tricked them and sent them off to see her high priest who locked them up. They were miraculously helped to escape from their cell by a firefly (yes, I know, but it is a legend) and went back to the pedrón where they had left the body. Raíña Lupa's high priest and his men pursued them but were buried under tons of rock and stone when a bridge collapsed as they crossed it, again miraculously.

Despite further tricks by Raíña Lupa, the travelers eventually managed to bury their holy man in a place to which they were guided ... yes, you’ve guessed it ...by a star. Raíña Lupa was supposedly so impressed that she converted to Christianity and destroyed her pagan temples.

The pedrón to which they tied their boat, it is said to be under the altar of the church of Santiago el Mayor in Padrón, where the peppers come from. Guess how that place got its name!!

As for the holy man, he was, of course, Sant Yago or Santiago, Saint James the Apostle.


And the award winning art gallery named after the legendary queen was opened in Barcelona two years ago by Rocío San Claudio Santa Cruz who hails originally from La Coruña, once, so the stories say, part of the kingdom of Raíña Lupa.