Entre literatura e historianotas sobre la cultura de los pazos

Zusammenfassung

The formidable, mainly baroque, architectural heritage of the Galician countryside, with its great monastic enterprises and thousands of parish churches and local sanctuaries would be incomplete without the pazos, or country estates. This ensemble of structures accurately reflects the groups that dominated society prior to the liberal revolution. While the origins of the landed gentry, the formation and constitution of their estates and their social reproduction mechanisms are known, their daily life, formsof sociability and cultural habits remain obscure. Thus, recourse is often made to the literature of the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century to address these themes. However, the generally rude and violent characters created by Pardo Bazán, Valle-Inclán, Otero Pedrayo and others do not accurately portray the nuanced and diverse historical reality that is reflected in inventories and other documents from estate archives, which merit careful study.