The Managing Director of Tourism, Rubén Lois, chaired the opening event together with the manager of the M.S. of the Xacobean Plan, Ignacio Rodríguez Eguíbar. Local authorities accompanied both of them during the opening of this exhibition which can be visited from tomorrow until the end of July.
The Galician Week, to be celebrated until next Sunday, will include besides the exhibition, several concerts and two days devoted to promoting thermal tourism with massage sessions in the Galician pavilion.
The Galician Ministry of Innovation and Industry opens a photo exhibition on the bonds between Galicia and the sea during the Galician day in ExpoZaragoza
The exhibition “Galicia, Santiago and the Sea”, sponsored by the Galician Ministry of Innovation and Industry through the M.S. of the Xacobean Plan, can be visited from today until the next 31st of July in the Plaza de los Sitios of Saragossa. The photographic exhibit has been especially designed for an outdoor setting and addresses the millennial relationship between Galicia and the sea. This bond is reinforced both by the “Translatio Sancti Iacobi Apostoli” from Jaffa to Iria Flavia and by the development of sea pilgrimages.
The exhibition is set on a long side of the Plaza de los Sitios as a sort of huge screen delimited by tower-lamps that work both as a lure and as information stands. Each panel has a size of 2×2 metres and contains large format photographs from Galician authors such as Tono Arias, Tino Martínez and Xurxo Lobato.
The contents of the exhibit start in the Galician prehistory, with images from pieces and settlements from the Bronze and Iron Ages, the period that has also been identified with the “castro” culture. In this period, that goes from the 2000 BC to the Romanization, in the first century AD, the dwellers of Galicia had contacts by sea, with the Atlantic Strip of Western Europe and with the Mediterranean Sea. Due to the arrival of Romans, these contacts intensified and never stopped to further develop during the Middle Ages.
The tradition of the transfer of Saint James’ body from Jerusalem to Galicia in a stone boat, which can be identified with the image of a mineral-trading ship, appears in the context of the trade agreements between the Peninsular northwest and the Mediterranean World.
With regard to the Middle Ages, the exhibit highlights the Norman invasions, with sites such as the West Towers of Catoira, the traditional festivities or the sea pilgrimages. This constitutes one of the most appealing parts of the exhibition since it underscores a quite unknown subject, namely the sea pilgrimages, caused by the increased speed and relative security of the sea ways, and by the Hundred Year’s War that resulted on the weakening of the Western terrestrial routes.
The exhibit goes further with the transoceanic discoveries, in which Galicia made important contributions: there is a special mention to the construction of caravel “Santa María” in Pontevedra’s shipyards and to the fact that the “Pinta” first arrived at Baiona with the scoop on the discovery of America. The relation of Galicia with the New World is synthesized in the exhibit through the development of St. James’s cult in American lands, and ends up with a reflection on the cultural and tourist offer that the Galician coast currently offers to visitors, tourists and pilgrims: the marinas, beaches and the gastronomy, intimately linked to the sea.
The final picture –a Santiago cake with St. James’ cross-sword– aims at closing the circle of an exhibition that starts with the Bronze Age sword found in the Ria of Arousa, the merging between the Atlantic and Ulla river waters through which the treasured corpse of the Zeb
MORE EVENTS FOR THE WEEKEND OF GALICIA
Malvela, La Señora Carme and Uxía, will perform today Friday at 1pm in the Balcony of the Cultures. That same performance will be repeated at 6pm in the Plaza de Aragón.
At 20:30, the Galician baroque band Resonet will play at the Pazo de Congresos.
Besides that, the weekend will be dedicated to the promotion of thermal tourism within the Galician pavilion with innovative initiatives that will surprise the audience, such as massage sessions and other water-related therapies.
