Prominent figures

The photographer Ramón Caamaño Bentín was born in Muxía in 1908. His love of photography began in 1924, when he met Ruth Mathilda Anderson, an American photographer and anthropologist who travelled around Galicia working for the Hispanic Society of America.
At the age of 16 he took his first photograph. First he learned in a self-taught way and then, in 1929, his mother sent him to Santiago de Compostela to perfect his technique in the studio of the prestigious photographer Kasado.

Also, in 1927, his photographic activity was complemented by the purchase of a Pathe Baby cinema projector with which he went over the region showing silent films in the open air.

In 1937 he married Teresa Louro, setting up his residence and photographic studio in Cee. In 1938 he was mobilized on the occasion of the Spanish Civil War and assigned to the front of Aragón, where he took his West Pocket camera with which he could take different war photographs. After the war he returned to Cee and later settled in Corcubión, where he worked until his retirement in 1975.

His home in Corcubión is located in Rúa Perigos (Perigos Street). Although many of his photographs are of Muxía and Corcubión, his activity took into account the whole region and Costa da Morte. He was one of the first photographers to photograph Costa da Morte’s landscape, customs and inhabitants. He is also considered the best rural photographer in Galicia, not only for his technique but also for the historical, sociological and anthropological interest of his photographs. That is why all his photographs (more than fifty thousand) taken since 1924 are a very important graphic sample of our territory.

All the work of Ramón Caamaño includes everything that happened in Costa da Morte over several decades, and is therefore an archive of a great historical value.

Maruja Mallo was one of the main artists of the Generación del 27 and a very important creator who travelled all over the world interacting with the greats of her time (Generación del 27 –“1927 Generation” – is the name given to the group of important avant-garde artists who, by working together, expressed an attitude that encouraged a casual form of expressionism)

She was born in Viveiro (Lugo), on the 5th of January 1902. She was the fourth of fourteen children and lived in a well-off family. Her real name was Ana María Manuela Isabel Gómez González but both she and her brother (the sculptor Cristino Mallo) used their father's second surname: Justo Gómez Mallo (a customs officer from Madrid), who was married to María del Pilar González Lorenzo, who was of Galician descent.

This artist had an important relationship with Corcubión. When she was two and a half years old her family moved to Tui (Pontevedra), but because her father had to work in different parts of the country and to free her mother from the responsibility of taking care of so many children, Maruja Mallo moved to live in Corcubión, from the age of two to eleven, with her uncle Ramiro González Lorenzo (married to Juliana Lastres Carrera, from Corcubión) who worked as a customs officer in the village and lived in one of Plácido Castro Rivas' properties located in the current Praza de Castelao (Castelao Square). 

The writer Emilio Insua assures that Galicia had a great influence on the artist's work, even though at the age of eleven she left for Avilés (Asturias) and later for Madrid. And precisely the place that most influenced her was Corcubión, because as Insua states "in Corcubión there is an awakening to the landscape and she talks about Pindo’s Mount or Carnota’s beach, or the markets in the square that is now called Praza de Castelao". In an interview with her, the artist refers to Corcubión with the following words: "in my childhood, I was amazed by the unexpected, by what was represented to me through some huge glass galleries, the fairs and markets that came from the outskirts to that little square near the pink Pindo’s Mount". Corcubión and the Atlantic Ocean mark the memory of Maruja Mallo, with the open-air dances (verbenas) being the theme of her first paintings.

In 1913 he moved with his family to Avilés (due to his father's work), where he started in the art world. In 1922 they moved to Madrid and there she began his studies at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando until 1926. This was the time when he made friends with Dalí, Lorca, Concha Méndez, Buñuel and Alberti, among many others.

A feminist woman who transgresses the social conventions of her time, she is considered a great reference for surrealist painting at an international level. Many writers of the time made her an emblematic figure in their texts.

The Riestra Foundation was born thanks to the assets contributed by the Riestra Figueroa’s family. The first of the Riestra's who arrived to this area was Joaquin Riestra, an Asturian pilot, belonging to a bourgeois family of sailors, who arrived to Fisterra after years of sailing and after getting married in the first years of the 19th century. His first wife was Josefa Lobelos, with whom he had two children and, when he was widowed, he married her sister, Benita Lobelos, with whom he had no descendants. Joaquin Riestra died in Fisterra on the 20th of February 1854.

His sons, Manuel and José, lived in Corcubión (Manuel was the mayor of Corcubión between 1846 and 1849, and also in 1855). José Riestra, the other son, was a pilot like his father. He married María Figueroa from Corcubión, with whom he had three children: Laureano, Joaquina and Ana Riestra Figueroa.

Laureano Riestra Figueroa worked as a pilot for a big English company where he made a large fortune in addition to what he inherited from his parents. Laureano lived in England and was single. When he became ill he decided to return to Corcubión to live with his sisters and brother-in-law, Emilio Alonso (married to Joaquina). Laureano, like his uncle Manuel, was also the mayor of Corcubión between 1887 and 1890, the year in which he died at the age of 53. He left his fortune to his sisters under the condition that a nursing home was built for the homeless elderly.

The years after Laureano's death passed but his last wish was not fulfilled. What they did was to buy a piece of land just next to the family home, where they built a good house, and Ana, Joaquina and her husband Emilio moved in. In 1904, Joaquina died and, as she had no children, her assets were passed on to her husband with the aim of uniting the inheritances of the two sisters after the death of her sister Ana to build the nursing home that Laureano would have ordered. It was in 1910 when Ana died, and the entire estate of the Riestra Figueroa’s family passed into the hands of Emilio Alonso.

Emilio Alonso, a medical examiner, married Pilar Hermida Orbea in a second marriage. When he died, the whole legacy of the Riestra Figueroa’s family that was in the hands of Emilio Alonso passed to Pilar Hermida, so the creation of the longed-for nursing home was delayed.

It was in 1925 when Pilar Hermida gave up part of the inheritance received from her husband Emilio, specifically the first family home of the Riestra Figueroa’s family, to build the nursing home for the elderly homeless there, committing herself to giving 3650 pesetas every year for twenty years while she lived and the nursing home existed. It was named after Emilio Alonso, although it did not come into operation until 1926.

It should be noted that not only was part of the Riestra Figueroa family's fortune invested in the development of this nursing home, but also the contributions of Santiago Domínguez and Camila Andrade, both neighbours of Corcubión, who left part of their fortune for the nursing home for the elderly maintenance.

Benigno Lago Estévez, known as O Peruano, was born in Corcubión in 1897. He emigrated to Argentina in 1915, to the city of San Miguel de Tucumán, where he worked on a sugar plantation owned by José Abella, another neighbour native of Corcubión. Two years later Benigno Lago left for the south of the country, to the city of Río Gallegos, where he set up a customs agency.

In 1920 he returned to Corubión to marry Constanza Figueroa Carrera, with whom he returned to Argentina to continue his life and where his three children were also born. There he bought a boat to dedicate himself to transporting fuel to different points located between the cities of Rio Gallegos and Comodoro Rivadavia.

At the end of the thirties he left for Peru, where he made a great fortune by the mining of mica mines and the fishing industry, even setting up a canning factory for which he ended up creating an important fleet of fishing boats.
Already in the early 1950s he sold his companies in Peru and returned with his family to his hometown with a large fortune.

Back in Corcubión he continued with the fishing business and invested a lot of his funds in the village. Thanks to him, Corcubión was, for example, one of the first town halls in the province to have a potable water supply. He also helped to carry out other urban improvements. Although he came from a well-to-do family, he was always a simple man who showed solidarity with others, even helping those in the village who did not have sufficient resources to build their homes.

He passed away in 1976 and his affable character made his neighbours not forget him and, in gratitude, they financed the bust and the plaque that was placed in his honour in 1981 in the viewpoint that bears his name.

José Carrera was born in Corcubión on the 19th of March 1857. As a teenager he emigrated to Argentina like many others of his time. There he worked as a shop assistant, and later on he was able to open his own business.

He became a respected entrepreneur and made a significant fortune with time and hard work. He also became vice-president of the Banco de Galicia y Buenos Aires, vice-president of the insurance company España y Río de la Plata and a director of different Spanish charities in Argentina. 

He married Clotilde Salomone Balvidares, with whom he had no children. He died in Buenos Aires at the age of 61 on July 27th 1918 due to an acute pulmonary edema. In his will he specified his wish to build a school of arts and crafts named after the José Carrera Foundation, for which he left a sum of money. Although his wife annulled the will for legal reasons, later on the widow agreed to have her husband's wish fulfilled and made a donation for the school to be built.

Five years after his death, on the 27th of July 1923, the embalmed remains of José Carrera arrived in A Coruña on board the steamer Sierra Nevada to be taken to Corcubión by car, where they were received by his nephew Alejandro Lastres Carrera. He was warmly welcomed by the population and the local government. The burial was then organised, on a provisional basis, in the now disappeared cemetery of A Viña, as the philanthropist's last wish was that their ashes should rest in the chapel of the José Carrera Foundation School. 

The building was completed in 1926, opening its doors as a school in 1931. It was used as an educational centre until the 1990s. In 2001, it was restored and subsequently moved to house the Town Hall and other public facilities.

Although he was born in Fisterra in 1860, Plácido Castro Rivas married the neighbour from Corcubión Eufrasia del Río Recamán, so they chose Corcubión as their place of residence. Their house was located in the central square of the town, in the current Praza de Castelao.

His figure was very important in the economic development of Corcubión, as he was one of the greatest exponents of the greatest economic splendour period in Corcubión between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.

He managed various businesses: banking, mining entrepreneur, exporter of lobsters to France... He was also vice-consul of England, Sweden and Norway. In politics, he was a liberal deputy for A Coruña. But, without a doubt, the warehouse located in Quenxe and the floating coal deposits (pontoons) he had in Corcubión’s estuary were the businesses which most marked his economic development. Due to this last activity, we can say that he was a very important figure in Corcubión and even at a national level, since thanks to his business he placed the estuary of Corcubión in an international level, making our estuary a strategic place for the supply of coal from the steamers that sailed along our coasts, since these were obligatory stops on the main international navigation routes.

In 1900 he created the Cape Finisterre Coal Deposit Company (Compañía de Depósitos de Carbón del Cabo Finisterre). In the best years there were almost four hundred ships a year refuelling coal on Plácido Castro's pontoons and, by that time, it was a fairly large number of ships.

At the end of 1916, the company was sold to the Corcubión’s General Coal Company (Compañía General de Carbones), which operated in the village until 1959, as there was no longer any coal traffic at that time.

In 1927 he went to live in San Sebastian and then to Nice. Finally, when the Second World War began, he decided to go to Uruguay, where he died in 1945.

Although he was born in Fisterra in 1860, Plácido Castro Rivas married the neighbour from Corcubión Eufrasia del Río Recamán, so they chose Corcubión as their place of residence. Their house was located in the central square of the town, in the current Praza de Castelao.

His figure was very important in the economic development of Corcubión, as he was one of the greatest exponents of the greatest economic splendour period in Corcubión between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.

He managed various businesses: banking, mining entrepreneur, exporter of lobsters to France... He was also vice-consul of England, Sweden and Norway. In politics, he was a liberal deputy for A Coruña. But, without a doubt, the warehouse located in Quenxe and the floating coal deposits (pontoons) he had in Corcubión’s estuary were the businesses which most marked his economic development. Due to this last activity, we can say that he was a very important figure in Corcubión and even at a national level, since thanks to his business he placed the estuary of Corcubión in an international level, making our estuary a strategic place for the supply of coal from the steamers that sailed along our coasts, since these were obligatory stops on the main international navigation routes.

In 1900 he created the Cape Finisterre Coal Deposit Company (Compañía de Depósitos de Carbón del Cabo Finisterre). In the best years there were almost four hundred ships a year refuelling coal on Plácido Castro's pontoons and, by that time, it was a fairly large number of ships.

At the end of 1916, the company was sold to the Corcubión’s General Coal Company (Compañía General de Carbones), which operated in the village until 1959, as there was no longer any coal traffic at that time.

In 1927 he went to live in San Sebastian and then to Nice. Finally, when the Second World War began, he decided to go to Uruguay, where he died in 1945.