The origins of the Fort (17th century)
The context:
The Porcillán pier
The history and evolution of the San Damián Fort is closely linked to the development of the port and the Ribadian town.
The town of Ribadeo arose in the second half of the 12th century under the protection of a personal initiative of the Count of Sarria and Montenegro, Álvaro Rodríguez, and his muller, the Infanta of Portugal Sancha Fernández, reaching an important development under the rule of his son Rodrigo Álvarez, master of the Order of Santa María de Monte Gaudio.
In 1182, King Ferdinand II, to end a conflict of jurisdictional interests that arose in the area between the bishop of Mondoñedo and the master of Monte Gaudio, incorporated the town into the domains of the crown and ordered the bishop to transfer the Episcopal See to Ribadeo, where he remained until 1248.
During the Middle Ages, the port of Ribades developed, reaching a marked commercial character that would define the economy of the town, as it was closely linked to the economy of the sea, becoming a commercial importer and distributor hub for the interior of Galicia and the west. Asturian. The town is transformed into a dynamic pole of attraction for neighboring populations, acting as an economic driving element and favoring the settlement of new population.
The existence since time immemorial of an ancient watchtower on the islet where the Cargadero viewpoint walkway now rests, controlling access to the primitive As Cabanas hollow, seems to be an unequivocal sign of the medieval development of the Ribadian port.
At the same time, the medieval town was surrounded by a wall that had seven gates and dominated from the highest part by a castle built in the second half of the 14th century when Ribadeo became a County. At certain points the wall had loopholes and at some of its doors there were small bastions.
In the 16th century, the continuous wars against France made the port of Ribadeo an easy objective to reach by enemy fleets leaving French ports. Periodic alerts of possible attacks will force the reinforcement and modernization of the old medieval defensive structures around the Porcillán pier, to adapt them to the use of artillery.
As a consequence, three new defensive structures would be built around Porcillán of certain importance due to their novel status in Galicia: The ravellín of Porcillán, the bastion of Atalaia and the battery and sentry box of A Moreira.
Báculo de Mondoñedo. Museo Nacional d´art de Catalunya.
The construction of the Fort
Shipbuilding
and the first Fort
A coincidental event will turn Ribadeo into a strategic military position in the Cantabrian Sea for the crown. The sinking of the galleon “Santiago de Galicia” in the Ribadeo estuary, where it had taken refuge after fighting with English and Dutch ships, in 1597, will cause the owner of this ship, Jácome Juan de Polo, to move to Ribadeo to build a new galleon (the “San Felipe”) with the usable remains.
Taking advantage of the construction of the San Felipe, the Portuguese businessman Juan Núñez Correa, who had been awarded a crown contract for the construction of ten galleons for the Guard Navy of the Indies Fleet, subcontracted the construction of three to de Polo. of the galleons (the “San Pedro”, “San Pablo” and “San Francisco”).
The construction of these war galleons makes the port of Ribadeo become a military objective for the Dutch navy in the context of the Eighty Years’ War. The danger that threatens the galleons under construction in Ribadeo, destined for the service of the Spanish Empire, makes the crown take interest for the first time in the military defense of the port of Ribadeo, whose status as a county town forced it to defend itself by its own means.
Given the evident lack of adequate defenses for the town and especially for the shipyard, in 1605 the captain general of the Kingdom of Galicia presented to the king a project by Bartolomé Muñiz, sergeant major of the District of Ribadeo, to build a fortification in “Punta do Carballo” to defend the entrance to the port of Ribadeo. However, the project will not be executed.
The Ribades shipyard thus becomes the first and only one in Galicia in which war galleons are built, a milestone that will be repeated in 1624, when the Xunta of the Kingdom of Galicia hires Juan Pardo Osorio to build four ships to form the Galicia Squadron and this decides its bill at the Porcillán shipyard, taking advantage of its origin and family prestige in the region.
In that same year, 1624, a courier arrived from San Sebastián warning of an imminent Dutch attack. The captain general of the Kingdom of Galicia, Juan Alonso Idiáquez de Butrón y Mújica, Marquis of San Damián, will then go to Ribadeo from A Coruña with soldiers and four thick pieces of cast iron artillery. An artillery battery will be built in “Punta do Carballo”, creating a new defensive infrastructure that will evolve from then on to become the San Damián Fort.
There is no graphic documentation of this first phase of construction of the fortification, but there are communications and writings from the time that give us an idea of the first configuration of the fortress. It consisted of a land battery and fax machine with capacity for fifty soldiers, with a layout adapted to the orography of the terrain seeking the best possible use, and equipped with eight thick cast iron artillery pieces.
