VII Bayona and Vigo
The prettiest bay in Galicia is that of Vigo, which reaches inland to Redondela—a village seated, as it were, on a Swiss lake, with two immense viaducts passing over its head where the train speeds to Tuy and Santiago. There is no lovelier spot in all Spain.
The city of Vigo, with its suffragan church on the hillside, is a modern town dedicated to commerce; its wharves are important, and the water in the bay is deep enough to permit the largest vessels afloat to enter and anchor. The art student will not linger here, however, but will go by boat to Bayona outside the bay and to the south near the Portuguese frontier.
Here, until quite recently, stood for an unknown length of time the suffragan church which has now been removed to Vigo. But Bayona, once upon a time the most important seaport in Galicia, is a ruin to-day, a delightful ruin, and one of the prettiest in its ensemble, thanks to the beautiful and weird surroundings.
Its history extends from the times of the Phœnicians, Greeks, and Romans,—even earlier, as remains of lake-dwellers have been found. This statement is not an exaggeration, though it may appear to be one, for the bay is as quiet as a lake.
After the defeat of the Armada, Bayona was left a prey to Drake and his worthy companions. They dealt the city a death-blow from which it has never recovered, and Vigo, the new, the commercial, has usurped its importance, as it did its church, which once upon a time, as is generally believed, was a bishopric.
The present ruinous edifice of Bayona is peculiarly Galician and shows the same characteristics as the remaining cathedrals we have spoken about so far. It was ordained in 1482 by the Bishop of Tuy. The windows of the nave (clerestory) are decidedly pointed or ogival; those of the aisles are pure Romanesque. The peculiar feature is the use of animal designs in the decorative elements of the capitals,—a unique example in Galicia, where only floral or leaf motives were used in the best period of Romanesque. The design to be noticed here on one of the capitals is a bird devouring a toad, and it is so crudely and rustically carved that one is almost inclined to believe that a native of the country conceived and executed it.