From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Coruña (also: Spanish: La Coruña, and Corunna in English[1]) is the
most North-western Atlantic-facing
province of Spain, and one of
the four provinces which constitute the autonomous
community of Galicia. This province is surrounded by
the Atlantic
Ocean to the West and North,
the Pontevedra Province to the South and
the Lugo Province to the East.
International
airports and helicopter airfields
Railway
Major commercial and
fishing ports
National
park
Natural
parks
International World Surf
Competitions
History
of the Province
The history of this province starts sometime at the end of the
Middle Ages during
the reign of the Catholic Kings of Spain. But during those
years this province was far smaller than what it is today, and this
is because in the 1833 territorial
division of Spain the entire Province of Betanzos together with half of the
Mondoñedo were amalgamated onto one single
province with its capital city in A Coruña. That was going to be the
beginning of a love hate relationship between the major cities
caught in between: Ferrol, Santiago de Compostela and A Coruña. It should be
noted, that due to this unusual situation the dioceses of these parts of
Galicia do
not match any longer with the administrative divisions. Even worst
than that, the capital city of the province does not have, and
never had a Cathedral
but both Ferrol and Santiago de Compostela do have
one. It should be note too, that the City
of Santiago de Compostela is not the provincial capital, but
has always been the Capital of Galicia and
historically a rival to Toledo for being the most important city
in Spain ecclesiastically speaking. Since 1833, the
Province of A Coruña
has always been the one with the largest population and largest
coast. Till the second half of the 20th century this province was
both the religious and cultural centre of the entire region. It
should be taken into account that the University of Santiago
de Compostela was the only one university in North-western Spain till the arrival of democracy
after the death of General Francisco Franco.
The Industrial Revolution:
Ferrol
The City of
Ferrol in the Province of A Coruña was one of the first places,
not just in Galicia but in Spain to experiment and suffer from the entire
set of socioeconomic changes which affected the United Kingdom in
the first half of the 18th century and the United States and some parts of Europe a century later. As a
consequence of that, Ferrol will be one of the first shipyards in the world to produce wooded
ships covered with copper sheets in the early years of the 19th
century, and by the end of the same century, the same shipyards
were producing iron armoured ships.
Ferrol was at one point the largest city in Galicia, the
place of birth of people like Pablo Iglesias Posse the founder of the
Spanish Socialist Workers'
Party, Concepción Arenal founder of the Spanish Feminist Movement,
the Franco
Brothers one pioneer of world’s aviation and the other hero of
the Spanish Second
Republic during the early years of the 20th century.
The
Peninsular War
In the Peninsular War, Sir John Moore headed
a 30,000-strong British Force, which attacked Napoleon
near Burgos, but they were soon forced into a long retreat chased
by the French, ending in an evacuation from A Coruña in January
1809 in the Battle of Corunna (also known by its
many variants and as the "Battle of Elviña". Moore was killed by a
cannon shot while directing the defence of the town. His burial
inspired a well-known poem.
Spanish Civil
War
- Battle of La Corunna Road
Fought in the outskirts of Madrid literally on the road which led at the
time to the Province. (13 December 1936 to 15 January 1937).
The Second
World War
The following German U-Boats has been reported as sunk
somewhere along the A Coruña province's coast:
The Province and City of A Coruña during the 20th
Century
After the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), and the
War of Independence (1808–1814) the
fortune’s of El Ferrol started to go into decline. This
is how the largest port in northern Spain, site of one of the three Royal Dockyards, together with Cartagena and
Cadiz, almost became a "dead"
town during the reign of Ferdinand VII. By
1833 the City and Naval Station of Ferrol saw its civilian population reduced
to just 13,000. [3] Even
though, during the administration of the Marquis de
Molina, Minister for Naval affairs in the mid-19th century new
activities will sprang up, Ferrol will never fully recovered up to
its former glories. It must be noted at during these years, most of
the Spanish Colonies
in Latin America will succeed in gaining independence from its
former metropolis.
Ultimately, the population of the City of A Coruña in 1900
ended up reaching 43,971 meanwhile the population of the rest of
the province including the City and Naval Station of nearby Ferrol as
well as Santiago de Compostela was
653,556. [4] A Coruña's miraculous
growth happened during aftermaths of the Spanish Civil
War at the same speed as other major Galician cities, but it
was the arrival of democracy in Spain after the death of Francisco
Franco the moment when the City of Corunna left all the other Galician
cities behind (i.e.: with the exception of Vigo of course). The
miraculous meteoric increase of population of the City of Corunna and to a
lesser degree Ferrol and Santiago de Compostela, during
the years which follow the Spanish Civil War during the mid 20th
century, can only be explained when we see the figures of the
number of villages and hamlets of the province which disappeared or
nearly disappeared during the same period. We are talking here
about an economic revolution and not so much to an explosion of
births or a substantial increase in living standards which of
course has happened too, but looking to the overall picture what
has happened is that the fields have been abandon due to the
introduction of new machinery and most of the population has moved
to find jobs in the main cities increasing the number of people
working in the Tertiary and Quaternary sectors.
The
end of a University Monopoly: Santiago de Compostela
The late second half of the 20th century saw the City
of Santiago de Compostela losing its monopoly over the
university studies in Galicia when all the other Galician Universities were created. Still,
not all were losses, as Santiago de Compostela, the
historical capital of Galicia, ended up being the chosen city
for the Galician Government and its Parliament, both new institutions
created with the arrival of democracy in Spain in the 1980s.
The burial-place of
Saint James the Great
The cathedral of Santiago
de Compostela is the reputed burial-place of Saint James the Great, one of the apostles
of Jesus Christ. It is the destination of the
Way of St.
James (popularly known by its local denominations: Galician
Camiño de Santiago, Portuguese Caminho de
Santiago, Spanish Camino de Santiago,
French
Chemin de St. Jacques, German Jakobsweg, and so on),
a major historical pilgrimage route since the Middle Ages which still
gathers thousands of pilgrims each year from all over the
world.
Pop/rock
See also
References
| A Coruña
Province |
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 • Ancient lands of the Counts of
Andrade and Vilalba in the 14th
Century |
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