Casa de Sarmiento

The name Sarmiento also means a vine shoot, from Latin sarmentum: an apt association in the Ribeiro, though it does not explain the family’s acquisition of its vineyards. The documented political story begins in Castile. Pedro Ruiz Sarmiento belonged to an established family of royal officers and landholders; he was not a minor local lord who rose solely through Galician wine. Later genealogies describe a Burgundian origin, which belongs to the history of the family’s claimed ancestry rather than a demonstrated medieval migration.

The Castilian civil war of 1366–1369 brought the family into Galicia. Pedro Ruiz supported Enrique de Trastámara against Pedro I; after Enrique’s victory, royal appointments and grants gave him a major Galician lordship. Ribadavia’s wine trade helps explain the value of that grant, alongside judicial rights, town revenues and landed estates. This was one part of a wider redistribution, not a single transfer of every former Castro or Templar holding.

In 1370 Enrique II appointed Pedro Ruiz Sarmiento Adelantado Mayor of Galicia, a royal officer with military and judicial responsibilities. He campaigned against the remaining supporters of Pedro I, including Fernán Ruiz de Castro. His victory alongside Pedro Manrique at Porto de Bois in 1371 strengthened the new dynasty’s position in Galicia; it did not place every Galician jurisdiction under his personal rule.

Royal rewards followed in several grants: O Burgo de Faro in 1372, then Ribadavia and Santa Marta de Ortigueira in 1375. Juan I added further rights and estates, including Sobroso, Avión and Anlló. Ribadavia was valuable because it combined a thriving wine economy with town revenues and rights of lordship. Merchants, growers, the town council, monasteries and the military orders continued to exercise their own rights within this landscape.

Pedro died of plague during the siege of Lisbon in 1384, while serving Juan I in the struggle for the Portuguese crown. His death preceded the battle of Aljubarrota in 1385. The Ribadavia branch continued through his descendants, but royal service and inherited estates did not guarantee a peaceful or uninterrupted lordship.

In 1386 John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, invaded Galicia while pursuing a claim to the Castilian throne through his wife, Constanza, daughter of Pedro I. Ribadavia resisted and was taken by an English force. The episode links the town’s history to the dynastic conflict that had helped establish Sarmiento power a generation earlier.

Jean Froissart’s Chroniques describe the attack, the use of a siege engine, Jewish participation in the defence and violence and looting after the town fell. His account is an important narrative source, but its dramatic numbers are not a census. They cannot establish that Ribadavia contained fifteen hundred Jews, that half the town was Jewish, or exactly how many defenders stood at each gate.

The Treaty of Bayonne in 1388 settled Lancaster’s claim through dynastic negotiation. For the history of Ribadavia’s Jewish community, the siege should be read alongside dated local documents and the archival research of Gloria de Antonio Rubio, explored on our Sephardic and converso page.

The ruins visible today belong principally to the castle Bernardino Pérez Sarmiento began building in 1472. Historian David Chao Castro connects that work with the insecurity exposed by the killing of Teresa de Zúñiga in 1470. The new residence incorporated part of the town wall and occupied ground previously used by the parish church of San Xes and its burial ground. The surviving castle should therefore be distinguished from Ribadavia’s earlier walls and noble residences.

Estate accounts record building work in 1476–1478: masonry, a stair, parapets and battlements, with payment in money, grain and wine. These entries bring the lordship into focus through the work of officials, notaries, craftsmen and suppliers. The armorial doorway, towers, great chimney and excavated graves preserve different layers of the site’s history.

The counts later established their residence in the Pazo dos Condes on the Praza Maior. Around them, the council, monasteries and Hospitallers retained a place in local society; San Xoán in Ribadavia and the commandery of Beade belong to that wider history. The castle was a seat of seigneurial power within the wine country, whose ownership and trade extended beyond the noble household.

The rivalry with the Soutomaior began before Pedro Madruga. In 1452 arbitration addressed disputes over Castro Cobadoso, Orcellón and Avión; the settlement assigned Salvatierra to Álvar Páez de Soutomaior. When delivery stalled, Álvar seized Diego Pérez Sarmiento at Ribadavia in 1455. The episode shows how written agreements and armed coercion worked together in the politics of the Ribeiro.

Pedro Álvarez de Soutomaior, called Pedro Madruga, carried the rivalry into a new generation. Vasco de Aponte associated his nickname with early departures on mounted expeditions. The cockcrow boundary race with Ribadavia is a later legend. In 1470 Pedro ordered the beheading at Ribadavia of his kinsman Diego Sarmiento de Soutomaior, lord of Sobroso; the accounts differ over the immediate motive and sequence.

In 1478 Pedro captured García Sarmiento and later used him as a hostage while trying to obtain Sobroso. Royal intervention in the 1480s constrained such private warfare. The families nevertheless retained estates and influence: pacification brought stronger royal supervision, rather than the disappearance of noble lordship.

Diego Pérez Sarmiento, first Count of Santa Marta, died in 1466. His chosen successor Bernardino was his son with Úrsula, described in the records as an enslaved woman; Enrique IV had legitimised him in 1457. Bernardino’s succession displaced the claims of his elder half-brother García and García’s descendants. The Great Irmandiño Revolt, which brought together rural and urban communities and members of the lesser nobility in 1467–1469, then forced Bernardino to take refuge at Mucientes in Castile.

Teresa de Zúñiga, his stepmother and guardian, returned to Ribadavia and was killed there in 1470. Bernardino’s later castle-building responded to this troubled setting. In 1476 he reached an inheritance settlement with his nephew Francisco, who received Santa Marta de Ortigueira and Palazuelos de Vedija. The royal confirmation issued at Madrigal on 16 April 1476 authorised Bernardino to call himself Count of Ribadavia. This dated document is the basis for the chronology used here.

The settlement did not end the dispute: in 1491 the crown again ordered valuation and division of the family property. Towns and monasteries also complained about Bernardino’s interference and abuses. His career reveals both the power and the limits of lordship: royal favour secured a title, while inheritance, revenues and jurisdiction continued to be contested. He died at Valladolid in 1522.

The arms of the Casa de Sarmiento bear thirteen gold bezants on a red field (gules). In heraldic language, a bezant is a gold roundel named after the Byzantine coin. Later writers sometimes assigned crusading meanings to such devices, but the design itself does not prove that the Sarmiento lineage fought in the eastern Mediterranean. The reliable description is the blazon: thirteen gold bezants on gules.

Ribadavia preserves both the castle ruins and the later Pazo de los Condes on the Praza Maior. Their different forms show the passage from a fortified seat to an urban residence. The modern Festa da Istoria celebrates the town’s medieval heritage; its reconstructions belong to public remembrance, rather than providing evidence for particular events or family relationships.