In October this year, about a year after I had written here about Santiago de Compostela and my Galician roots, I received an unfamiliar email.
Rosa Maria Cores-Burr emailed me from Florida, saying that she was drawn to this column in the MetroPost (http://dumaguetemetropost.com/santiago-de-compostela-and-my-galician-roots-p10519-736.htm) while she had been reseaching for links to her own Spanish ancestry.
It was truly amazing while reading her email, each sentence sending shivers down my spine as she recounted the history of our great-great grandparents Jose Antonio Montenegro & Ana Mascato from Galicia in Spain.
Our great-great grandparents Montenegro and Mascato come from a small town in Vila Xoan de Arousa in the province of Pontevedra, about 50 kilometers from the Galician capital of Santiago de Compostela.
Vila Xoan is where Knight Templars (Catholic military oder) once roamed and built their castles locally called paradors, which now have become hotels. We actually stayed in one of them, called Vila Nova de Arousa, a stone’s throw from Vila Xoan.
In September 2018, I had the chance to visit Santiago de Compostela, one of Spain’s prime destinations for pilgrims who would walk up to 800 kilometers or more to reach the great square Praza do Obradoiro and the Cathedral. There, the great Censer with the incense would be lit, and five monks would heave up and swing to a 180 degree arc that was in itself dramatic and breath taking.
My companions and I visited Vila Xoan, a deep wish on my part, to stand on the ground where my ancestors came from.
For a long time, Pontevedra was just a place in the map, too far to be able to imagine anything about it. But as I stood there by the beach, and by the church of San Martin de Sobran, the place suddenly became real.
But some questions were burning in my mind: Would I have any relatives around? How could I reach them?
Too bad, I could not express myself completely in Spanish to the two women sunning themselves at the beach. They instead corrected our pronunciation of Vila Xoan…”Vila Showhoang”, they urged.
Rosa Cores-Burr’s email tells me the story of her great-great grandmother Angela Montenegro, sister of Joaquin and Enrique Ruperto, from Vila Xoan, specifically from the parish of San Martin de Sobran.
While Angela Montenegro stayed in Galicia, her two brothers went on a lifetime adventure in one of Spain’s colonies, the Philippines. The two Montenegro brothers Enrique Ruperto and Joaquin landed in Negros Oriental, in the areas of Tanjay, Bais, Ayuquitan (now Amlan).
(My editor was curious why they left Galicia, and why they chose to come to Negros Oriental, of all the thousands of islands in the Philippines. I wish I knew.)
The story goes that Enrique Ruperto Montenegro had two children with his wife Maria Manuela Mariño: Jesus Maria y Josef Montenegro — my maternal grandfather — and his sister Carmen Bocanegra y Montenegro.
Enrique’s brother Joaquin Montenegro married Simeona Trasmonte, and became a wealthy sugar planter in Negros. Joaquin and Simeona had two children: Emanuela and Felix. When Simeona died, Joaquin went back to Galicia with his daughter Emanuela, and left Felix behind in Negros to manage the family plantation. Back in Galicia, Joaquin remarried.
Rosa herself was born in Vila Xoan, the ancestral town.
We are family, Rosa wrote to me.
How dear that is. Such a sweetness this acknowledgement of belonging which opens a world of potentials and possibilities. For now, while we establish a clearer genealogy, we rely on the world of Facebook to further cement our common ancestry.
Author’s email: [email protected]
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