The “irmandiña” war...

The “irmandiña” war in Cangas

In 1467, it started one of the most significant events in the History of Galicia and Cangas was not indifferent. Then, the abuses and the outrages of the Galician nobility were of such a magnitude that they led the kingdom to the most complete anarchy. The fortresses turned into a nest of delinquents; the thefts and crimes of all kind were usual all over the country changing the order and the justice for the law of the most powerful. In addition, the disproportionate eagerness of the noble feudal lords for getting rich led them to seize ecclesiastic manors and to be involved in continuous confrontations among them.

All this finally inflame passions of the peasantry and the inhabitants of the towns, who from 1464 started to ask for the consent of the king to form “irmandades” (brotherhoods), which would be the responsible to ensure the safety and the peace. From this moment, the events precipitated. The brotherhoods, which had started in the main population centres, spread like a wildfire to the last rural settlements resulting in the formation of the “Santa Irmandade do Reino de Galicia”. Its elect people were considered as royal delegates and so they assumed the power. The decision of the “irmandiños” mayors and delegates when applying justice was implacable: numerous killers and bandits were executed summarily. Afterwards, the “irmandiña” rage headed to the highest symbol of the feudal oppressiveness: the fortresses. An immense popular army besieged and finally knocked down about 140 towers and castles all over the country, after what the defeat of the high nobility was complete, running away to Portugal or Castilla. Between 1467 and 1469, the “Santa Irmandade” was the unique government in Galicia.

In Cangas, the noble opprobrium was represented by the fortress of Darbo, belonging from 1184 to the Archbishop of Santiago. Placed on the top of what today is known as Monte Castelo, it consisted basically on a wall, reinforced with four bastions and with two houses inside, protected by a wood stockade. Although it was a rather weak building, its location made it to be in a place very difficult to attack. Our village also had its own “irmandade” with its respective mayor, Xoán de Fontefría. And the rage of the people of Cangas fell on the nearby castle, where they went all together to besiege the fortress. We don’t know if it was stormed of submitted peacefully by Vasco Fernandez, but it is sure that it was totally knocked down and almost certainly razed to the ground, just as the “irmandiños” used to do. And the popular army of Cangas still had time to participate in the overthrow of other nearby fortresses such as the Soutomaior one.

After the triumph of the “sparrows” over the “falcons” during three long years, the time for the falcons to take revenge arrived. The noble counter-offensive in 1469 finished with the definitive thwarting of the “irmandades”, but nothing would be the same. The military defeat in 1467 supposed the beginning of the end for the feudal power of the Galician aristocracy; their social isolation became patent and also their total incompetence to govern politically the country. The following decades brought a strengthening of the monarchy and its institutions and Galicia went with firm step in the new modern age.