The Carlist wars in A Limia (1833-1876)

The Carlist wars were three civil conflicts of the 19th century (1833-1840, 1846-1849 and 1872-1876) between the supporters of Carlos María Isidro de Borbón and his descendants and the liberals and Isabelinos who backed Queen Isabella II. Beyond the dispute over the throne, they were a clash of ideologies: Carlism defended traditional absolutist monarchy, conservative Catholicism and regional charters. In Galicia, its backbone was the clergy and the gentry; the peasantry needed more "house and bread" than ideals, and so it was not a mass movement. A Limia, a border comarca with Portugal, experienced mainly the First and Third wars, and today we know the episodes chiefly from the archive documents Edelmiro Martínez Cerredelo gathered in Historia de Xinzo de Limia ^[1][2].

The First Carlist War (1833-1840)

Mobilisation and protection of religious property. In October 1836 the Arms and Defence Commission of the province of Ourense ordered the Urban Militia reorganised: concellos had six days to enrol single men and childless widowers aged 18 to 40 (except farm servants and field workers), with pay of four reals a day. In all 2,200 men would be mobilised in the province, of whom 176 fell to the Xinzo judicial district ^[1]. To prevent Carlist bands robbing rural churches, the authorities ordered jewels and worship objects deposited in the Ourense seminary; after neighbours’ protests, those indispensable for worship were allowed to remain, on condition that priests and some neighbours answered for their value. In Xinzo, the abbot, the authorities and the leading neighbours of the parish and of the annex of Damil signed before the notary the documents making them responsible for the jewels, spread across four houses in Xinzo and four in Damil ^[1].

Mateo Guillade’s band and the sacking of Xinzo (1837). In 1837 Mateo Guillade’s band appeared in Xinzo, hoping for a great uprising in A Limia. It entered the town on 19 September and caused havoc, especially at the house of the first-instance judge, Ramón Martelo, looted and left uninhabitable; the damage was valued at 25,000 or 30,000 reals. Among the band’s members were three men from Fiestras: the priest Baltasar Seguín, his brother-in-law Francisco Cerredelo and his cousin, the exclaustrated friar José Seguín, who ended up sentenced to the ordinary death penalty; in October, Baltasar’s father agreed with the judge to pay 7,000 reals in two instalments. The band, of about forty-five men according to one version, entrenched itself with thirty at Ordes and fought the royalist forces of Commander Juan Gualberto Corcuera. Several neighbours of Sabucedo and Fiestras joined it and deserted or requested pardon soon after, claiming they had been forcibly recruited; in the retreat towards the border, the band passed through Baltar ^[1].

Two versions of Judge Martelo. A Xinzo notary, José Velasco Losada, accused Martelo of cowardice: knowing on 18 September that the faction was near, he took the prisoners out of the jail at night, returned them next morning and fled to Allariz, and in March and April 1838 he fled other times to Verín and Ourense leaving the town undefended. The regent of the Audiencia of Galicia replied that Martelo had followed common sense and the orders of the political chief and discredited Velasco for the many lawsuits he had been embroiled in; the notary was murdered by the faction in mid-following month, and the regent suggested closing the case. Martelo’s service record says the opposite: that, at the head of Xinzo’s National Guard, he defeated the rebels on several occasions (the villages of the Mixtos, the fields of Atás and Fuga, where three leaders and nine rebels fell), and that the concello certified that on 19 September 1837 he defended himself with a small number of guardsmen and lost his horse to three bayonet thrusts. Martelo later had a long judicial and political career: judge in A Lama, Vigo and Ferrol and political chief in Pontevedra, Lugo and Navarre ^[1].

Arrests, pardons and raids (1838-1839). The Santiago archives hold many trials from this period. In 1838 a state of war was declared in several areas, Xinzo among them. In February 1839 neighbours of Xinzo and Ganade were arrested for helping a Carlist rebel and keeping an English rifle. A neighbour of Piñeira de Arcos declared that, returning from the Xinzo fair, he was forcibly recruited and taken to a house in Xinzo the faction called the "barracks", and that Guillade’s band of about a thousand men crossed Rebordechá, Moreiras and Gudín to Verín and A Gudiña, where the Queen’s troops scattered it at the Ventas da Barreira. After Guillade’s death, the band split in three; one section was under Veloso, who died on 11 April 1839 at San Paio de Abades. On 21 March they robbed the abbot of Faramontaos and several peasants; in August the mayor of Porqueira, suspected of dealings with the Carlists, was tried and acquitted; on 31 August a band passed through Rubiás taking three recruited youths; on 9 September another was seen at Serois; on 21 October they raided neighbours of As Pegas and Cardeita (Sandiás), including the priest; and in November and December there were incursions into Damil, Ganade, San Vitorio, Filgueira, Outeiro (Vilar de Santos), Blancos, Loureses and Ouvigo, with shouts of "viva Carlos V" ^[2].

A case of dubious justice was that of Pedro Veloso’s father, arrested in September 1839 as his son’s collaborator; it was later recognised that he had been wrongly accused and the commander of the Nocedo National Guard and two informer witnesses were sentenced by the captain general of Galicia to pay damages and costs ^[2]. Throughout 1839 several men of Meaus, Ganade and Couso de Salas came forward for pardon and handed over the weapons and mounts they had used in Antonio Vázquez Lugues’s faction, in exchange for a bond and a pledge of loyalty to the queen ^[1].

The Second Carlist War (1846-1849)

It left hardly any trace in A Limia. The only datum found is a March 1849 order from the province’s war commissioner, published in the Boletín Oficial de la Provincia, to concentrate the Civil Guard, split it into columns of thirty men and station it at Verín, Xinzo and Trives ^[2].

The Third Carlist War (1872-1876)

In the preparations of 1870 the border area was the hardest hit. In Rairiz de Veiga a Carlist committee operated that was later broken up: on 27 March 1870 Juan Puga appears at its head, offering 6 to 10 reals a day to whoever enlisted, and with him Juan Suárez Campo, future head of the faction. Suárez’s faction, who had already taken part in the First War with Guillade, appeared and disappeared very easily in the triangle between Xinzo, Verín and the Larouco range; his second-in-command was Manuel Salgado Miranda, nicknamed Pichón, and his third Camilo Rodríguez Arias. It soon failed: in an encounter with the army at San Paio eight Carlists were taken prisoner, including the chief and his second; on 12 August Rodríguez Arias came forward for pardon, and on 23 August the army found six of them in the house of the Marquis of Valladares, in Ordes (Rairiz de Veiga). In Ganade, the Losada house, with a sort of castle, served Francisco Losada to defend himself against the Carlists ^[2].

The year 1873 was turbulent: since 5 May, when chief Sabariegos entered Xinzo, the town was invaded several times by bands led by Suárez, Salmás, Trapero, Valerio, Prol, Mergeliza and others, with excesses in Xinzo, Calvos, Porqueira, Rairiz, Sandiás (where they killed the tax collector) and Sarreaus. There were raids on tax collectors: on the night of 13-14 June, in Sandiás (1,000 and 1,200 reals, with a receipt from chief Ambrosio Prol); on 21 June, in Rairiz de Veiga (860 pesetas, with cheers for Carlos VII and Pius IX and death to the Republic); and on 2 September, in Calvos de Randín, where a band of a hundred men took 21,752 reals from the collector’s house in Pintás with a receipt from Valeriano Rodríguez. The latter case raised doubts: the authorities suspected it might be a simulated theft. The mayor of Baños de Molgas had already reported in March that the sanctuary of Os Milagros was a centre of the Carlist conspiracy. There was also talk of combined attacks on Xinzo and Viladerrei, with exaggerated figures of 2,000 men; on the outskirts of Viladerrei a guerrilla of the Murcia regiment killed nine Carlists ^[2].

The war ended on 28 February 1876, when Carlos de Borbón crossed the border saying "I shall return". In 1888 Carlism split and the integrist current broke away to form its own political option ^[2].

Frequently asked questions

Who was Mateo Guillade? The chief of the Carlist band that entered Xinzo on 19 September 1837 and operated around A Limia until his death ^[1].

Why were there so many bands in A Limia? Because of its border position with Portugal, which made it easy for bands to appear and disappear ^[2].

Links

• History of A Limia
• The battle of the Xinzo bridge (1809)
• Rairiz de Veiga
• Sandiás

Sources

1. Edelmiro Martínez Cerredelo, «Apuntes sobre as guerras carlistas na Limia (1.ª parte)», Historia de Xinzo, 17/09/2018, extracto de Historia de Xinzo de Limia. https://historiadexinzo.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/apuntes-sobre-as-guerras-carlistas-na-limia-1a-parte/ — cita, entre outras, J. R. Barreiro Fernández (1976), BOPO 1836, AHPOu (protocolos notariais) e o Archivo Histórico Nacional (Mº Xustiza, Magistrados-Xuíces, 4700).
2. Edelmiro Martínez Cerredelo, «Apuntes sobre as guerras carlistas na Limia (2.ª parte)», Historia de Xinzo, 18/09/2018. https://historiadexinzo.wordpress.com/2018/09/18/apuntes-sobre-as-guerras-carlistas-na-limia-2a-parte/ — cita o Arquivo Histórico Universitario de Santiago (Fondo Castroviejo Blanco-Cicerón), BOPO 1849 e Barreiro Fernández (1976).