The Armada, Puga, and Mosquera — tower lords and knights of Santiago — formed the military core of the Ribeiro's lesser nobility. But no hidalgo network runs on swords alone. Around that core there existed a wider ring of families whose power was expressed not through fortified towers but through pazos, wine commanderies, marriage alliances, and the quartered arms carved above their doors. These were the "Feijóo", the "Noboa", the "Araújo", and the "Villamarín" — four houses whose interlocking genealogies bound the entire system together.

The connections are everywhere. Diego Feijóo "el Bravo" married Berenguela de Noboa Villamarín — one marriage uniting three of the four families. Their son Suero Feijóo married Susana de Puga, daughter of Gonzalo de Puga and Teresa de Noboa — linking the Feijóo directly to the Puga tower lords. Antonio de Puga Feijóo married Antonia de Araújo. The compound surname "Feijóo y Araújo" appears across the Ribeiro's parish records throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At the Pazo de Olivar in Puga, the shield displays the combined arms of Puga, Villamarín, and Novoa. At the Casa Grande de Merens in Cortegada, the largest heraldic shield in Galicia — eighteen quarters under a count's crown — bears the names Araújo, Feijóo, Mosquera, Novoa, and Sarmiento side by side.

If the Armada-Puga-Mosquera triangle was the skeleton of the network, the Feijóo-Noboa-Araújo-Villamarín ring was the connective tissue — the web of marriages, shared jurisdictions, and wine wealth that kept the valley's nobility functioning as a single system for three hundred years.

The Noboa — also rendered Novoa — were one of the most ancient noble houses in Galicia. Their primitive solar was at "Pena Novoa", in the parish of Novoa, within the district of Ribadavia, province of Ourense. From this castle the family took their name. They were lords of the land of Novoa and its castle, and married several times into descendants of the Royal House of Castile and León.

A critical branch took root at the "Castle of Maceda" — an eleventh-century fortress in the Allariz region of Ourense, notable for its massive granite walls. In the twelfth century, the castle was given as a dowry to "Doña María Fernández", daughter of "Teresa of Portugal" (daughter of Alfonso VI) and — according to tradition — Count Pedro Froilaz de Traba, though some genealogists attribute the parentage to his son Fernando Pérez de Traba. Her marriage to "Juan Ares de Novoa" established the Noboa lineage at Maceda, where it continued until the seventeenth century. The castle hosted the young "Alfonso X the Wise" (age eleven), who studied the Galician language within its walls — a detail that connects the Noboa to the very origins of Galician literary culture. Declared a Historic-Artistic Monument in 1949 and a Cultural Heritage Asset in 1994, the castle now operates as a hotel-monument.

The most vivid record of the Noboa is carved in stone. In the "Church of San Francisco de Ourense", four plateresque tombs from the early sixteenth century preserve the memory of the Noboa-Puga alliance. "Teresa de Noboa", wife of Gonzalo de Puga, lies beneath an ornamental arch — her effigy with hands clasped in prayer, two small dogs playing at her feet. Gonzalo's adjacent tomb shows him in full armour, helmet, hands on chest, head on two cushions, a greyhound at his feet, an angel bearing a prayer book at his side. His epitaph — the most extensive and laudatory of the entire funerary ensemble — declares him a vassal of Ferdinand and Isabella and a regidor of Ourense. The heraldry on the tombs connects both families to the house of Villamarín.

Two further tombs complete the ensemble: "Juan de Noboa", in battle attire with hands joined in prayer, and his granddaughter "Elvira de Noboa" — described as the eighteenth lady of the house of Maceda. Elvira's arcosolium features a carved *vultus trifrons* (three-faced head sharing only four eyes) — an extremely rare iconographic element that speaks to the theological sophistication of the patrons who commissioned it. She wears platform shoes, holds a rosary, and rests her head on rich pillows, while a small dog pauses from gnawing a bone at her feet.

The Villamarín story is the most dramatic social ascent in the Ribeiro network — from monastery tenants to fortress lords in three generations. The property that became their seat was originally called the "Casal de Bouzoa", under the domain of the Monastery of Oseira — the great Cistercian house of Ourense. In "1321", the monastic administrator leased it for eight years to "Gil Fernández de Vilamarín" — the man whose name would become the family's surname and the name of the fortress itself.

The transformation from tenant to lord came in "1372", when King Enrique II granted the district and jurisdiction of Vilamarín to "Alfonso Ougea de Vilamarín" and his descendants. This royal grant converted what had been a lease into a lordship. The Vilamarín lords built their fortress on the leased land while nominally continuing to pay tribute to Oseira, but over time payments became negligent and the family claimed outright possession. Litigation with the monastery arose at the beginning of the sixteenth century and was presumably settled in the family's favour — by then, the fortress they had built was the most imposing private residence in the province.

The "Pazo-Fortaleza de Vilamarín" stands at nearly 450 metres elevation on a rocky formation. Its plan is an irregular polygon with seven corners — a kind of elongated hexagonal shape — built of granite masonry. "Five crenellated towers" rise from the walls — three circular and two square according to the Galician Wikipedia, though other sources such as Galicia Máxica describe four circular and one square — all supported by corbels. The central entrance, a round-arch doorway flanked by semicircular towers, leads into a complex that includes a barbican on the less protected sides, four chimneys (the kitchen chimney alone measuring over two metres per side), and multiple construction phases spanning the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries. Reportedly damaged during the "Irmandiño revolt of 1467" — though no documentary evidence confirms outright destruction — it was rebuilt with Baroque additions and declared a *Monumento Histórico-Artístico* in 1977. Owned since 1976 by the Diputación Provincial de Ourense, it now serves as a museum.

The Villamarín name appears throughout the network's heraldry. "Leonor López de Noboa Villamarín" married into the Neira family; their son Suero de Neira Villamarín married "Constanza Feijóo" — linking Noboa, Villamarín, and Feijóo in a single alliance. "Catalina Feijóo "of the house of Villamarín"" married Cristóbal Rodríguez de Noboa — again uniting all three surnames. At the Pazo de Olivar in Puga, the Villamarín arms sit beside those of Puga and Novoa on the combined shield. And "Suero de Villamarín" ceded the lordship of Maceda to his half-brother Juan Pérez de Novoa — binding the Villamarín and Noboa houses through shared jurisdiction over one of the greatest fortresses in Ourense.

The four families produced figures that transcended the boundaries of the Ribeiro valley. The most remarkable was "Pedro Martínez Feijóo", born in the village of Troncoso in Castrelo de Miño in 1694 — a man from the heart of Feijóo-Araújo country whose career spanned province to court. He rose from provincial hidalgo to Doctor of Canon Law, Knight of Santiago, and Councillor of the Royal Council of Castile. On 2 September 1762, Carlos III created him "Conde de Troncoso" — naming the title after his birthplace. His son Pedro Manuel married María de Zúñiga y Losada, daughter of the Marquises of Bosqueflorido — connecting the Ribeiro network to the Zúñiga counts of Monterrey. The Count of Troncoso donated altarpieces by the sculptor Salvador Carmona to the church of Astariz — a gesture of patronage that echoed the traditions of his ancestors.

But the family's most enduring contribution to Spanish culture came through the Feijóo line. Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro (1676–1764), whose mother carried the Puga and Novoa surnames, became a Benedictine monk at Celanova and went on to write the *Teatro Crítico Universal* (1726–1740) and the *Cartas Eruditas y Curiosas* (1742–1760) — works that challenged superstition, championed empirical science, and made their author the most widely read Spanish intellectual of the eighteenth century. His advocacy for reason and observation predated the French Encyclopaedists and earned him the protection of Fernando VI, who decreed in 1750 that criticising Feijóo's works was forbidden. The hidalgo from the Ribeiro wine country became Spain's one-man Enlightenment.

The physical legacy survives in stone. The "Casa Grande de Merens" (1789) in Cortegada — owned by "Agustina de Puga y Araújo" and her husband "Pedro de Cisneros de Castro y Ulloa", II Conde de Gimonde — displays the largest heraldic shield in Galicia: eighteen quarters bearing the surnames of the entire hidalgo network under a comital crown. The Count of Gimonde himself was a member of Spain's Supreme Central Junta during the Napoleonic War, a patron of the arts who created a free Drawing School in Santiago in 1805 and protected an entire generation of Galician artists. Pazos de Arenteiro, declared a Historic-Artistic Ensemble in 1973, preserves the Feijóo world intact: the *solaina* of the Pazo dos Feixóo, the Malta crosses of the Encomienda, the Romanesque church, the medieval bridges.