April 11th, 2003

The next morning, we woke up and felt somewhat refreshed. The hotel (the Hotel Galicia Palace, a very nice place despite the relatively low price) served a buffet breakfast including scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, fruit, cold cuts and cheese, various breads and croissants. After taking our time and having a good meal, we were in a much better state to see the city.

In addition, the weather cooperated with us nicely; despite a predicted forecast of several days of thunderstorms and rain, we got partly cloudy weather with only scattered rain here and there. So when we started out, it was a rather nice day. My father’s cousins, Mellie, Margot and Maria Carmen, along with their husbands Amelio, Melucho and Chano, who joined us later, gave us a wonderful tour, and afterwards, took us to lunch.

One thing I noted about Spain is that there are quite a few ruins. Even driving on the highways around Madrid, you can spot many buildings in various states of disrepair or ruin, some looking like they’ve been that way for a few centuries; Pontevedra is no different. Some of the major attractions of the city are the architectural remains from 500 years past. The first we saw was the Santo Domingo convent, but soon after and much more spectacular was the Santa Maria Basilica, a wonderful and ornate structure both inside and out. During our walk through this place, Karen quipped that the word “ostentatious” probably came from the Latin “ostentador,” meaning “I think we can cram one more angel in here.” Much more true in what we saw at the cathedral at Santiago the next day. From the basilica it was on to my grandfather’s old school.

A word here about my family history. The Poza clan, it is thought, originated from the Valencia area, and by the start of the 20th century my family line of the clan had settled in the Galicia province, in the town of Pontevedra, at the mouth of a beautiful estuary leading to the Atlantic. Pontevedra is some 50 km north of Vigo, which itself is just north of Portugal. The Pozas had the reputation of being the intellectuals of the town, and though not rich, were relatively well-off. They were also liberal, and were anti-fascist and anti-clerical (the Church of Spain had aligned itself with the fascists).

My grandfather, Papa Hernan, established and ran a school in town that, though small, was very highly regarded. There was one issue he had to decide on, however: whether or not to allow a cleric to teach courses in religion at my grandfather’s academy. In the end, my grandfather decided to do so. The reasons could have been both practical and ethical. Papa Hernan was a great believer in civil liberties, in freedom of religion as well as all the others we now accept; from a more practical angle, however, allowing these courses would help business, as the influence of the church was strong. This did not sit well with the family, however, and caused a bit of a rift.

The Spanish Civil War, however, swept over everything else. When the fascists took over, the Poza family went through somewhat of a Diaspora, those who survived the conflict and its aftermath. Being anti-fascist and anti-clerical, most had to run for their lives and resettled in Mexico and, as in my grandfather’s case, the United States. My grandfather, who had spoken and written openly against the fascists, almost didn’t make it. He was put into prison and would have died, thrown into the back of a truck and driven to the mountains where he would have been shot in a ditch. This was prevented, however, by some of the parents of the students at his school; some were soldiers and guards in the new fascist regime. They respected him to such a degree that they took shifts guarding his cell at the prison, making sure that he was not killed.

Eventually, he was released, but he heard that there were plans to re-arrest him, this time taking him to a prison elsewhere, a place where he could not be protected. So he fled through Portugal and eventually settled in New York, where his family (his wife and four children) followed a few years later.

So here we are, nearly 70 years later, a hundred years after his birth in this town, and we visit the site of that school he ran. It now houses some agricultural ministry office, and unfortunately we were not able to visit inside, as it was Holy Week when we came. Still, it made an impression on me just to be there and contemplate the history that happened there, punctuated nicely by the children in school uniforms playing soccer in the plaza in front of the building.

A little later, we were shown a third-story window that was the apartment my grandmother moved into less than a day after my father was born; we learned a story about it. My grandfather had been taken away by then and so my grandmother was alone with her three children and the newborn. On the day before, there was some kind of water damage in the building. People in the damaged apartment, apparently on a grudge, blamed the Republican family living above and got them kicked out. My grandmother had to scramble to find a place to live on that of all days.

We also saw the sanctuary of La Peregrina, standing tall above a plaza, another of the very old buildings of the city on the estuary. All of our tour so far was in the old section of town, kept consistent with the old styles very well.

After the walk through the old town, we got into our cars and drove out on the peninsula to have lunch at a very nice seafood restaurant. Later, we walked off the meal along the beach, finding shells to bring back home (dad found a good cuttlefish bone for his canaries), and then we took a scenic drive back into town, where we retired for the evening.

— Photos from the day are thumbnailed on the Day 3 Photo Page.

Coming Soon: Day Four: Lunch with another cousin, and the cathedral at Santiago.