Betanzos

Legend attributes Betanzos's founding to the Celtic chieftain Breogán, and the town appears in Ptolemy's Geography under the Roman name Flavium Brigantium, though some historians now place that settlement in A Coruña rather than here. In 1212, Alfonso IX of León and Galicia granted Betanzos the status of a vila, and in 1219 the population moved from its old site at San Martiño de Tiobre — known as Betanzos O Vello, or Old Betanzos — to its present location on the ancient hillfort of Untia. Later, Alfonso XI freed the town from taxes in recognition of its efforts at the Battle of Tarifa, and in 1465 Enrique IV raised it to the rank of city.

The town's greatest period came when the Catholic Monarchs made it the capital of one of Galicia's seven provinces. That era was closely tied to the Andrade family, above all Fernán Pérez de Andrade, known as O Bo — The Good — whose support for Enrique II brought him lordships over Ferrol, Pontedeume, and Villalba, and whose patronage drove the construction of many of the town's major buildings. Decline followed through fires and poor harvests, and in 1834 the administrative reforms of Javier de Burgos absorbed the old province of Betanzos into that of A Coruña.

Betanzos is known as the capital of Galician Gothic, and its old town is considered one of the most intact in Galicia. The three main medieval churches — Santiago, San Francisco, and Santa María del Azogue — are its most important monuments. The city walls survive with their pointed Gothic gateways at the old bridge, the new bridge, Ribeira, and Hórreo.

Other notable buildings include the Palacio de Bendaña, the Torre Municipal (the clock tower), the Convento de las Madres Agustinas in the former Royal Hospital, and the Pazo de Lanzós. The Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Os Remedios is a work by Juan de Herrera. From the Palco da Música, Manuel Lugrís Freire delivered the first entirely Galician-language public speech in 1907.

The town also holds a collection of Modernista houses — Casa Núñez, Casa Pita, Casa Limiñón — alongside the Gothic houses on Calle de la Cerca. The brothers García Naveira left a significant legacy of civic buildings in the same period: a public washhouse, schools, an asylum, a refuge, and above all El Pasatiempo, a pioneering themed park unique of its kind. The traditional Globo de Betanzos balloon is hung from the tower of Santo Domingo church.