ROSALÍA HOUSE
Audio 6
Mountain Tree (Ovidio Murguía)
Audio 3
Audio 5
WELCOME
This is the house of Rosalia de Castro, in which she lived the last days of her life and in which she died on the 15th July, 1885. Here we set out a journey of the incidents that marked her life and work.
VIDEO
She never had her own house
Rosalía lived in many different places, in rented or borrowed houses. But she lived here the last years of her life and this one became the House of Rosalía after a popular initiative which culminated with the opening to the public in 1971.
A house for everyone
La Casa da Matanza (The Slaughter House) was converted into a museum thanks to the popular initiative promoted by the Rosalía de Castro Board of Trustees that received thousands of supporters in all of Galicia and in the emigration. At that time thousands of anonymous people participated starting from the proposal of the choreographer José Manuel Rey de Viana; collections were organised in many towns and in almost all of the Galician Centres of Emigration.The Rosalia Board of that time was a refuge for Galicianism who still remained in the interior in the Franco’s regime and they converted this into one of their principal causes. But moreover they united more than 60 town councils, various banks, the Federation of Savings Banks, multiple entities, from Celta de Vigo FC to the Federation of Galician Cycling and countless associations. In the end, they raised a total of 994,043 pesetas in 1971.
“Whoever owns a house is set for life!”
This quotation from Rosalía is illustrated by three small displays: an identity card, a ceramic piece which shows the house as a souvenir and a family photograph taken in the garden.
Opening day
The House opens to the public in 1971 and as a Museum-House in 1972. Maruxa Villanueva, an actress and singer who returns from emigration, is who looks after the House and attends to the public until her death in 1998.Maruxa Villanueva, whose real name was María Isaura Vázquez Blanco, was born in Barrela in 1906 and died in Santiago de Compostela in 1998. She dedicated all her life to the knowledge and exaltation of Galician culture. An emigrant in Argentina from 20 years old, she converted herself into a successful singer and actress, as well as in a cornerstone of Galician culture in Buenos Aires, where she involved herself very busily in activities in favour of the Republic.
Who was Rosalía?
Rosalía observes us, serious, self-assured and serene, from her portrait, an oil painting by Modesto Brocos. This artist painted a friend, an intellectual who by 1880 was already a recognised writer.
A female Galician intellectual
Rosalía is a critical intellectual, always on the side of the weakest and who condemns female submission. As a writer she is profoundly refreshing and as a Galician woman she displays pride in her country.
The houses of Rosalía
Here various photographs of houses connected to Rosalía are displayed, like that of Arretén, the old palace of the maternal family; or the house of the Castro de Ortoño, where her father was born; and the no longer standing house in the ‘Calle del Sol’ street in Padrón, where she lived as a girl.
Rosalía’s friends
“Let Lieders sing our holy freedom!” Around this exclamation from Benito Vicetto various images of friends and family of Rosalía y Murguía are displayed, such as Alejandro Chao, one of her editors; José Hermida de Castro, cousin; Camilo Álvarez de Castro; Benito Vicetto; Serafín Avendaño, Eduardo Pondal and Aurelio Aguirre.
The life of Rosalía de Castro
Rosalía is born in Santiago de Compostela in 1837, daughter of the Padrón resident noblewoman Teresa de Castro and the priest José Viojo, neighbours in the very town of Padron.Her life is a really passionate story, full of historic, cultural and intellectual interest. Through her life, from the perspective of a female child of a single mother and a priest, we can understand the social code of her epoch.For Galicia Rosalía de Castro is more than just a writer. Generation after generation, her figure is a reference beyond ideas and geography. For Galician people no other literary or cultural figure unites us as much around our feelings of belonging to a land. She has generated innumerable pages, images and songs.
Galician Songs
Published in 1863, Cantares Gallegos (Galician Songs) is the first work printed entirely in Galician, and would mark the beginning of the full Galician Resurgence (Rexurdimento, a historical rebirth in Galician culture).
Follas novas (New Leaves)
This new book is a monumental piece of work, of complex and powerful lyrical magnitude, which was to cement the literary recovery of the Galician language.
An unceasing writing
In 28 years of literary life, Rosalía published five collections of poems. The last of these is En las Orillas del Sar (On the Banks of the River Sar) in which the poetic voice is more than ever that of the author.
Rosalía’s “Daybreak”
Near the end of ‘Cantares gallegos’, Rosalía includes the poem Alborada (Daybreak), a lyric with a strong simbolic content composed to be sung along to a piece of music played by Gregorio Eiras, a bagpiper from Lestrobe.
An extraordinary discovery
This example of Cantares gallegos’ (Galician Songs), discovered in 2013, contains an unknown photograph of the writer, a text signed by Rosalía and the transcription of a thank you letter from Fernán Caballero.More information, [here](https://youtu.be/UjL_JqHGqvU).
Rosalía’s prose
Rosalía de Castro’s prose is voluminous and diverse, and pushes the boundaries of the existing literary models of her time. It also connects with the work of a range of writers of her period.
“Negra sombra”, the all-time most popular pieces of Galician music
“Negra sombra” (Black shadow) is one of the all-time most popular pieces of Galician music. Indeed, Rosalía is the Galician writer whose work has most often been put to music, from the 19th to the 21st century.
Rosalía and cuisine
Among all the dimensions that the dignified literary work carried out by Rosalía has, that which affects the gastronomy as a Galician cultural sign is fundemental. For that, Galician Songs begins with the list of numerous dishes: boiled chestnuts, broth baps, anisette crust cake, porridge… But its cooking pages also follow the logic of the humble: the “Broth of Glory” from “My little house, my home!”, the killing of the pig from Vidal or the mountain party of “The poor little girl that is deaf”.On the 24th of February, Rosalía Day and aniversary of her birth, we celebrate with a Broth of Glory ([Caldo de Gloria](https://rosalia.gal/que-facemos/proxectos/caldo-de-gloria/) in Galician).
Manuel Murguía
At 25 years of age Murguía abandons his literary career in Madrid and returns with Rosalía to Galicia. He has to tell the story of his country. In debt to romantic ideas, he atributes the Celts with all the energy of the Galician nation, but his ‘History of Galicia’ (five volumes) is still valid, above all when it highlights a distinguishable cultural historic subject and not racially.We can see several drawings, a manuscript and several volumes of his ‘History of Galicia’.
Murguía funds the Galician Academy
“Distinct language shows signs of distinct nationality”. These are the words of Murguía in the historic speech delivered in Tui in 1891. In 1905, with the economic support of the emigration, Murguía and other intellectuals founded the Royal Galician Academy. Its foundational act is written in Castilian Spanish but Galician language was already flourishing.We can see the top hat of the author, various photographs and the act of the Academy constitution on display.
Without literature there is no culture
A people is not such if it is not capable of creating literature, for that Murguía, at only 29 years of age, insisted on the composition of a ‘Dictionary of Galician Writers’. All of his generation asked for the appearance of a poet that listens to the song of the people and believes in Galician as the true Galician literature. A woman would do it, his woman: Rosalía.We can see images surrounding Murguía, test prints of the ‘Dictionary’ and a paperweight on display.
Ovidio Murguía and the Galician landscape
Landscape is not nature, it is a cultural construction, thus was the debate of the arts in the 19th century. And there must be Ovidio (1871-1900), nationalising old Galician horizons, in a similar battle with the construction of Galician literature. Supported since a child by his family, Ovidio studies in the Economic Company of Santiago and continues his training in Madrid. At 28 years of age he cuts short his career, when the artist begins to enlighten the Galician landscape.We can see various objects of the painter, the other side of his palette and his wallet with documents on display.
The daughters of Rosalía
Rosalía and Murguía had seven children, of which five survived infancy: Alejandra (1859-1937), Aura (1868-1942), Gala (1871-1964), Ovidio (1871-1900) and Amara (1873-1921).
Alejandra (1859-1937)
Alejandra Martínez-Murguía de Castro was the oldest daughter of Rosalía and Murguía, as well as the goddaugther of Alejandro Chao, her mother’s editor. Born in Santiago de Compostela on the 12th of May, 1859 and died in A Coruña on the 22 of March, 1937. Draughtswoman and painter, she was teacher to her brother, the painter Ovidio Murguía. She contributed to the Galician and Asturian Enlightenment (overseen by Murguía), in which she designed the header that has been used since the 20th of July, 1879.In the Museum-House three of her watercolours are on display, as well as the sheet music of Rosalía’s Daybreak just as Alejandra sung it, notes with Galician proverbs collected by herself and the header that she designed.
Aura (1868-1942)
Born in Santiago (Rúa Callobre, 40) and died in Carmona in 1942.
Gala (1871-1964)
Gemela de Ovidio, was the longest living daughter of Rosalía and Murguía and played an important role in the opening of the Museum-House.
Amara (1873-1921)
Born in A Coruña (Príncipe 3, 2º) and died in the same town in 1921.
Adriano Honorato Alejandro (1875-1876)
Born in Santiago (Senra, 17 principal) and died falling from a table 19 months later.
Valentina (1877)
Still born in Santiago.
The bed in which Rosalía died
Rosalía died here in 1885, at 48 years of age. This was her bedroom, as the aforementioned Gala left it. On her death bed the writer asked for the window to be opened, as she wanted to see the sea. Gala confirmed that at that time the sea could be seen from here, together with the white sails of the cargo galleons sailing on the Ulla, the river that swells the tides in the firth of Arousa and still today is called “sea” in this area.The picture of her son Ovidio, still only 14, recollects that event.
Allegory for Galicia: woman, myth, symbol
With the relocation of her mortal remains from Padrón to Santiago an unstoppable mythification begins: only six years after her death she inaugurates the Pantheon of Illustrious Galicians. By the force of her work and the magic of her myth, Rosalía becomes an authentic allegory for Galicia, traditional Galician muse, Mother-Earth, pioneering woman, “Precious Saint”, secular ancient Galician goddess, Mater Gallaeciae (Mother Galicia), ambassador of Galician culture in the world.We can see the first tributes on display, the wreath for the mausoleum sent by the ‘Lliga de Catalunya’ (League of Catalonia), the drawing by Fenollera, the one by Portela, different products with her name, photographs, translations to other languages of her work and the first poster of Galician Literature Day, that remembers the publication of ‘Songs’ on the 17th of May, 1863.
Mementos of Rosalía
Here various mementos of Rosalía are displayed: a lock of Rosalía’s hair and the paper in which it was wrapped, with drawings by Ovidio; and the flower of the wreath and a piece of her shroud.On the 25th of May, 1891 her mortal remains were relocated from the Adina Cementary in Padrón to the Pantheon of Illustrious Galicians in Compostela (that later accomodated other distinguished celebrities), when her daughter Alejandra gathered these memories of her mother.
“Shut away in my big livingroom”
The condition of women was one the great worries of Rosalía, a free woman, an intellectual woman, but she also understood like nobody the women of the fields and the sea. She publishes the manifestos “Lieders” (1858) and “Las literatas” (“Women of letters”, 1865), reflects on and denounces in the prologue of ‘La hija del mar’ (“Daughter of the sea”, 1859) and her feminist thoughts go through all her literary work.We can see the three-piece suite of the Murguía de Castro family, the family piano and the dress of the young Rosalía, restored by Carmen Pichel, as well as the portrait by María Cardarelly.
Oil Painting by Ovidio
It is the biggest painting that the artist painted, already in the stage in which he developed his greatest artist skill, in 1899, one year before his death. At its side, a photograph of the artist and two palettes of the painter.The painting ‘Mountain Tree’ was produced by Ovidio Murguía in 1899, a year before his death, during his stay in Madrid, following the outlines of the European realistic landscape painting of the 19th century. The artist gives priority in this composition to the foreground, in which he highlights the tree and the motif of the rocks. At the same time, the opening of space directs the view to the background and serves as a link to the mountain range.
Ramón Baltar Feijóo Archive
A combination of more than 400 pieces where autographs of Rosalía, Murguía, Castelao and other important Galician personalities are found. From Ángel Baltar Varela and along various generations, the Padrón resident family of the Baltar maintained a close relationship, many times acting as protectors, with some of the most important intellectuales, writers and politicians of contemporary Galicia and accumulated an extraordinary documental base.
Pioneering woman
By writing in Galician, Rosalía demonstrates the viability of the language of the country for literary creation. Hence the enormous effort carried out in a society where the comfortable classes speak and write in Castilian Spanish. But Rosalía still produces another result, she places the centre of her world in Galicia and creates a new territory: contemporary Galician culture. It is not surprising that the Galician flag emerged in 1891 associated with Rosalía de Castro.Here we can see a bust of the author by Lorenzo Collaut Valera, her first verses in Galician, an image of the inauguration of the monument in Padrón, with Otero Pedrayo (another distinguished pro-Galician writer), together with the publication of the first use of the Galician flag during the relocation of her mortal remains in 1891.
The pro-Galicianism speech
The Galician people as a political subject and Galicia as a nation is the systhesis of the intellectual effort of Manuel Murguía to create the pro-Galicianism speech, already summarised in 1865, in the “Preliminary Speech” of his History of Galicia. But in 1890 it is necessary to take action and the intellectual elite found the first Galician political party, the Galician Regionalist Association; in the following year, in towns and cities the first commitees emerge and the regionalists make Murguía their honourary president.Here we can see a portrait of Murguía painted by Ricardo Camino in 1923, the constitution of various local committees of the Galician Regionalist Association in 1891 and the Galician flag on the funeral ribbon of the pro-Galicianist, as well as a bust.
Rosalía’s flag
This was the flag used in the inauguration of the monument to Rosalía in the ‘Paseo del Espolón’ walkway of Padrón, on the 23rd of Abril, 1957. Custody from that date of the Padrón resident pro-Galicianist Camilo Agrasar, during the sixties and seventies it was the flag used by diverse collectives from the region of Padrón [donation from the family of Camilo Agrasar].
Front Door Trellis
This vine was the rest area for the Rosalía family and source of literary inspiration. Here we can invoke those verses of “Ouh, miña parra de albariñas uvas / que a túa sombra me dás” - “Oh, my albariño grape vine / how you give me your shade”.Vegetative formation made up of eight vines that burst out and work hard against so many other pilaster components of the arbour. They are young feet, of “Catalonian” wine, planted in the first half of the current decade, to substitute and give continuity to the old trellis, whose presence in the garden goes back to remote times.Since 2013 they have coexisted with albariño vines, that will be the ones that finally form the trellis, to the detriment of the “Catalonian” vineyard, recalling the famous poem of “New Leaves”.
Tree of Gernika
Memorable Tree. Daughter of the ‘Gernikako Arbola’ - “Gernika Tree”. Donation from the General Government of Bizkaia for Rosalía Day 2019, after the year before the first that had been brought by Avelino Posa Antelo in 1994 died.This new child of the legendary Basque tree was a gift from the General Government of Bizkaia, the organisation that maintains the Gernika Tree, that has symbolized the traditional freedoms of the Basques since the Middle ages when the Knight of Bizkaia swore to respect the forces below this oak. In the present day it is the place where the “lehendakari” - Basque President promises to fulfill his duties.
Audio 1 (Welcome)
Audio 2
Audio 4
Audio 7
Audio 8
Audio 9
Audio 10
Portrait of Rosalía (Modesto Brocos)
Collaborate
You can collaborate with the Casa de Rosalía in different ways: becoming a volunteer, a friend, a protector or a patron. You can get more information [here](https://rosalia.gal/colabora/razons-para-colaborar/) (in Galician).You can also buy books, music and objects related to Rosalía's life and work, in our [online store](https://tenda.rosalia.gal/).
Rosalía de Castro Camelia
Its main distinction is marked by the fact it deals with a camelia that was created in honour of the poet and therefore carries her name. Of Portuguese origin, distinguishable for its prolonged blooming, between November and April, with attractive, semi-double, large, orange-red coloured flowers. It is a hybrid creation from the renowned Portuguese nursery Moreira da Silva and Sons, in Porto: the first specimen obtained was baptized with the name of the author and gifted in 1968 to the Museum-House.
The Rosalía House Fig Tree
This fig tree, already historic, has been heroically resisting the inclemency of the weather and the scarce longevity of its species. The specimen was losing the physiognomical elegance that it flaunted in its better times, but thanks to the care it has received in the last decades it continues being the main reference in the House of Rosalía Garden. Despite the belief that it was planted by Rosalía herself, and one of her most famous poems talks of planting a fig tree, we have no proof of it.
The Rosalía House Ombú Tree
Majestic tree and to make you admirable that it forms part of a collection of American trees (coral tree, ombú, silk floss and jacaranda, these last two disappeared for lack of environmental adaption, originating from Buenos Aires, brought in seedling state, in the year 1971 by the House of Galicia for the official inauguration of the House Museum.
An extraordinary book
Xela Arias recites "A de quen comprende"
Rosalía on the balcony (Mónica Camaño and José Luís Orjais do Pico)
The museum complex
The Casa de Rosalía complex includes four buildings: The Museum (this house), the Auditorium, the Archive (former home of Maruxa Villanueva) and the meeting room, a work area for the staff of the foundation and its Patronato.On the outside wall at the back of the House we also find several plaques of different organizations that pay homage to the figure of Rosalía de Castro.
