ATLAS DE PAISAJES DE LA MEMORIA. GALICIA 1579-1865

Title:           Atlas of Landscapes of Memory. Galicia 1579-1865Author:         Jesús Conde-GarcíaThesis director: José González-Cebrián TelloUniversity:              UNIVERSIDADE DA CORUÑA. (Spain). Department of Architectural Projects and Town PlanningINTRODUCTIONRecently, the study of maps and cartography has evolved “to extend beyond the idea of maps as ever-improving representations of the geographical world, at least three approaches have been developed and championed: the map as cognitive system, the map as material culture, and the map as social construction” (WOODWARD, D. & LEWIS, G. M. 1998). Maps begin to be valued as a source of significant information, not only as historical testimony of social and cultural change but also as an effective instrument for looking into and influencing phenomena and processes. A map is a useful tool for understanding better our surroundings, asserting the role of the imagination in cartography. Maps are active elements in the creation of the collective imagination. From this point of view, and given that the landscape is without doubt a cultural transformation of territories, one can establish the hypothesis of considering some maps as landscape.GENERAL DESCRIPTIONIn the present case, the study is centred on maps of Galicia and plans of the most important cities, analysing the information that they give us, as much about processes of regional development as about the qualities of public space and the built-up areas of towns and villages.This approach helps give us a necessary viewpoint, since “maps are often ignored or regarded as poor evidence by historians, but there is a rich store of town plans going back into the sixteenth century which can reveal much about urban growth and change” (HINDLE, P. 1990). Paradoxically, “much of what is known about maps and mapmaking in traditional societies is derived from the kind of sources widely used by historians: museum, archival and special collections, early printed books of travel, and official publications of many kinds. Somewhat surprisingly therefore, historians, even ethnohistorians, have rarely used extant maps as evidence,” undervaluing a map’s ability to transmit information, or even more, to show a particular vision or interpretation of the world. “Why have maps been so clearly marginalized? Perhaps they are trivial, gross oversimplifications of the world that often stand in the way of our understanding of it”, but we should not forget that “all ways of knowing the landscape – speaking, writing, singing, painting – have their own subtle ways of representing reality” (WOODWARD & LEWIS 1998).Hence the idea of the principal research tool being graphic representation, as much through the interpretation of portraits of Galicia and its principal towns and villages produced in different historical periods, as through the construction of new images which arise from the accepted importance of maps in the definition of the city.Therefore, the present thesis on maps and plans does not constitute a mere cartographic summary but an interpretation and re-elaboration. The survival of the map, or layout (in spite of the modifications and constructive renovation), means that its analysis at the present moment reveals to us, by itself, very important aspects of the process of formation of urban structure; “the ground plan of the city takes into account a priori the relationship between the conditions of the economy, commerce and traffic, and defines the fundamental character of the place over many years. In fact, the fundamental aspects of the city are those that, even after their disappearance, refer us back, like reliable footprints, to its past developments” (KLEIHUES, J. P. 1995).This collection of analysed, commented, interpreted and re-elaborated maps constitutes an atlas of Galicia and peculiar to it, which tries to explore to what extent a map lets us not only get to know a particular area but also in some way to see it through a singular prism, to imagine it under a new light; or in other words how a map helps us to construct a landscape.OBJECTIVES1º. To test the hypothesis of the importance of maps in the cultural evolution of territory. The map as landscape2º. To decide whether the interpretation and analysis of the principal historical maps of Galicia and its population centres offer us a clear image of the evolution of the system of towns and their role with in the Galician landscape, which would let us reduce the scope of the study3º. To represent graphically, based on the present cartography of the principal centres of population in Galicia, Calvino’s claim that “the town does not tell us its past, it contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the angles of its streets.” (CALVINO, I. 1972)4º. To analyse the historic fabric, in the conviction that “the historic town is present in the new town like a genetic code. The characteristics of the historic town – its period of ‘birth’, its limits, transitions and processes – are those which, in a different way, characterise the totality of the new town.” (CARSTEN, J.-C. 1985)