Joaquim Rodriguez' descendants in Cortegada de Baños, Ponte Deva, Freans, Galicia, Spain

THIS LETTER WAS STARTED IN SEPTEMBER, 1997 BY DENNIS GREENWOOD RODRIGUES AND IS ADDRESSED TO HIS CHILDREN. IT WAS WRITTEN FOLLOWING A VISIT TO RELATIVES IN GALICIA, SPAIN. THE FAMILY STORIES WERE GATHERED DURING THAT TRIP, FROM CONVERSATIONS WITH ODILIO RODRIGUES, A GREAT UNCLE OF DENNIS'AND FROM DENNIS' OWN RECOLLECTIONS OF FAMILY LORE.

Dear Daniel, Thomas, Amaya and Jacqueline,

Mom and I learned alot about our Spanish roots last week (the first week of September, 1997). There is so much to tell and so many people to tell that we've decided to write you a letter. It will be long because there is so much to tell.

Our Rodrigues side is more than Spanish: it is Galician. Galicia is the province of Spain that sits above the northern border of Portugal and is the most Portuguese of the Spanish provinces. The language spoken in Galicia is one of three recognized languages in Spain: Castillan Spanish, the usual language one thinks of when one says Spanish, Catalan, spoken in Cataluña, where Barcelona is, and Galician. Galician sounds alot and is alot like Portuguese. It was easier to be understood by the cousins we met in Galicia when we spoke Portuguese than when we tried out our best Portuñol.

The Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Freans de Ponte Deva, dedicated in 1681. Esther Rodrigues and Cousin Carmen by the front door.

The cousins me met live in Freans, a little village less than a mile from where your great great grandfather Joaquim Rodriguez was born and raised. We saw and photographed Grandpa Joaquim's house. It was totally reformado recently and looks nothing like what it did in the 1870's when Grandpa Joaquim was born. The house is 8 km from the border of Portugal. So our Galician relatives, living so close to the border, are probably the most Portuguese-like of any of the Galicians.

The Birthplace of Joaquim Rodriguez in Regueiro, Puente Deva, Orense, Galicia, Spain

The countryside is hilly and green, the hillsides covered with grapevines. The grapes are usually green, and very sweet in early September when we visited. Our cousins grow grapes, but around their home there are also lemon, peach, apple, pear, chestnut trees, a vegetable garden. The leaves of the grapevines are trimmed off to allow more sun to hit the grapes and speed up their ripening. In a couple of weeks (we were there in early September and the grapes were all ripe, sweet and juicy), when the grapes are at their ripest and even have begun to dry a bit on the vine (so that the juice isn't so watery) the grapes are picked, smashed, the juice separated and put into casks to ferment into wine. Cousin Carmen insisted Mom and Dad try some of the 1996 crop of wine with our lunch. They apologized saying that the wine was not the best, because it rained too much in 1996.

Cousin Jose Rodriguez Rodriguez (who married Cousin Carmen and is not actually related to us other than through their marriage) allows the left over grape skins, seeds and pulp to ferment, then heats them and allows the vapor to condense. What condenses is aguardente, or bagaceira, a type of pinga made from grape mush. Cousin Jose and Cousin Carmen asked us to bring a couple of bottles back for Tio Odilio, who lives in Santos and was one of your Grandpa Nivio's 20 uncles and aunts (before they all got married and he ended up with about 40 uncles and aunts. Tio Odilio was born in 1917, only nine years before your Grandpa Nivio, and is now 80 years old. Tio Odilio is your great uncle and was one of the youngest brothers of your Great Grandpa Avelino, the oldest of either ten or eleven kids of Great Great Grandpa Joaquim. We will go meet Tio Odilio to show him the video tape and photos that Mom and Dad took in Galicia, plus give him the bagaceira and some of the chestnuts Cousin Carmen sent.

Carmen Codias Ceoani and her husband Jose Rodriguez Rodriguez pouring aguardiente into a bottle to take as a gift back to Brazil for Tio Odilio

Cousin Carmen Ceoani Codias is a great niece of my great grandfather Joaquim Rodriguez. She is a wonderful, warm woman who hugged me as if she had known me all my life, even though we had just met. Her kitchen is small and tidy. She has a huge black wood burning stove. She ground coffee for us in an old orange cast iron coffee grinder. Foodstuffs were hung from the ceiling to keep them away from rodents. Thwarting rodents is a way of life: we saw hundreds of granaries in our trip through Portugual and Spain, all built up on rock stilts. In the middle of each of the stilts is a large, flat, round rock, to keep rats and mice from climbing up into the granary.

Carmen Codias Ceoni in her kitchen with wood burning stove and coffee grinder, 1997 Freans, Puente Deva, Orense, Galicia, Spain

When we were leaving Cousin Carmen's home, she and her husband Jose insisted that we take some of the grapes that were just perfectly ripe, growing outside their kitchen door. The grapes were in the direct sun all day long and were warm to the touch. In Galicia, people believe that eating warm grapes will make you sick, so Cousin Carmen washed the grapes in cool water for a long time so that we could eat them without getting sick. We actually kept some of the grapes and took them all the way back to São Paulo for our children to eat.

Jose Rodriguez Rodriguez picking warm grapes for us to take back to São Paulo

Grandpa Joaquim would have been a farmer if he had stayed in Galicia. He came from a family of three kids. But even with only three kids, there wasn't enough land for each of them to get a piece big enough for each to raise their own family. So Granpa Joaquim and many many other Galician young men left to get work in other countries. Many went toArgentina, and many to Brazil. The similarity of the Galician language with Portuguese must have made it easy to settle in Brazil. Grandpa Joaquim probably never went to school and arrived in Brazil illiterate. He must have worked hard and been quite clever because he worked his way into the Santos a Jundiai railroad and ended up as a Maquinista (the Engineer of a locomotive). The Santos a Jundiai is the name given to the old Sao Paulo Railway, founded by the British and that runs through Paranapiacaba, which we've visited with Sue and Riccardo. Check out this site about the Santos a Jundiaí railroad, including a route map that shows Lapa station, Paranapiacaba and the descent to the Raiz da Serra, an 800 meter vertical descent in about 10 kms. of track.

Grandpa Joaquim may have helped his oldest son Avelino (your great grandpa) get a job at the railroad. Avelino went to elementary school, learned to read and write and was also very clever. Instead of working on the trains, Avelino became a telegraphist, sending and receiving messages on the telegraph, working at several stations in the interior of the state and gradually getting promoted to Chefe de Estação at the big station in Lapa in Sao Paulo. For everything you might like to know about Brazilian railroads, check out this site on Railroads and Railroad Modeling. The Estação Ciencia in Lapa, that today is a Science Museum and that we've visited a couple of times, probably looks a lot like the place Grandpa Avelino worked while at the railroad.

The railroad ran, of course, from Jundiai to Santos and Santos is where Grandpa Joaquim and all his children and their wives and the grandchildren settled. So did your Grandma Lucilla Hernandez's family (grandpa Nivio's Mom). Grandma Lucilla was the oldest of nine children. Grandma Lucilla's Dad Francisco Hernandez came from Ciudad Rodrigo in Castilla in Spain. See the web site of the Hernandez family lovingly kept by Guilherme Eduardo Hernandez. Ciudad Rodrigo is a big town as compared to Freans de Ponte Deva where Cousin Carmen was born and still lives or Regueira de Ponte Deva where Grandpa Joaquim was born or Crespos de Ponte Deva where old cousin Benito still lives. Those little villages are collections of ten to thirty houses each. Ciudad Rodrigo today has 15,000 people. But still, these were village people and were used to living close together.

So Grandpa Avelino (possibly after retiring from the railroad?), moved back to Santos and got a job working for the Companhia Docas, a private company owned by the Guinle family of Rio de Janeiro. The Guinle's which received a concession (a monopoly really) from Emperor Pedro II to develop and operate the ports in Santos and Rio. Maybe some other ports too, but that doesn't matter. Grandpa Avelino was a very intelligent man and had alot of experience running a big railroad station with lots of trains needing to be organized and sent off and brought in on schedule, loaded and unloaded. The Companhia Docas needed someone to be the Chefe de Tráfego, the Chief of Traffic, who decided which ships could pull in at which dock to be unloaded by which people with which equipment and loaded onto which trucks and which trains. A big job, which Grandpa Avelino did very well. He lived in a big house provided to him by the Companhia Docas until he retired.

The part of Galicia our relatives come from is famous for smuggling, pinga making and emigrants. Smugglers took cigarettes from Portugal (a country that was always more involved with import and export than Spain) to big cities in the interior of Galicia like Orense. Cousin Jose tells about the smugglers route going right through Freans and having them stay at their house. Smugglers are, for all practical purposes, in the import and export and transportation businesses. They just don't pay any taxes on the goods they transport. It is interesting that grandpa Avelino's business was transportation (first by train then by ship) and that Rodrimar's business is import and export and transportation of goods. Also dealing with Brazilian customs authorities, a complex and sometimes corrupt activity.

Cousin Jose makes pinga and supported his family for many years and the families of the three employees that helped him in making pinga. Making pinga itself is not illegal in Galicia. Not paying taxes to the government on the pinga you make is. Cousin Jose told us that when the census was made in Galicia, the government discovered that both he and Cousin Carmen existed, but had never paid any taxes, nor paid into the equivalent of the Spanish equivalent of the INPS (the Spanish Social Security) system. Not having paid, they were not entitled to an old age pension. So they had to pay up. Cousin Jose raised the money to pay up a bunch of taxes by selling a cow. He then had to have a major operation on his abdomen to remove his gall bladder. He was very fat at the time and had trouble with his liver too. After the operation he was allowed to retire due to his disability (not having a gall bladder). Today Cousin Jose is very thin.

Cousin Carmen had to keep paying on a monthly basis into the Spanish INPS system for several years until she became old enough to retire based on her age. Cousin Carmen and Cousin Jose receive enough from their pensions to live very happily in the house that belonged to Cousin Jose's great grandfather. Cousin Carmen's mother's (Consuelo Codias Rodriguez) house is two doors down the hill and now her youngest brother Jose (known as Pepe) lives in it. I'll write more about Pepe later. Cousin Carmen's grandparents house (this is the home of Grandpa Joaquim's half-sister Josefa Rodriguez) is across the lane and is empty and falling down. It is a traditional stone house with ceramic roof tiles. Joaquim's father Constantino Rodriguez had Joaquim by a first wife, who died, then remarried and had Josefa and ??.

Lots of our relatives emigrated from Galicia and except for Pepe and his father Antonio, none returned. Grandpa Joaquim moved to Brazil. His half-sister Josefa's two sons Odilo and Manoel also moved to Brazil. We will try to track them down, but with last names like Fernandez and Rodriguez it will be hard to tell them apart from the thousands of other Fernandez and Rodriguez in Sao Paulo. Consuelo's husband Antonio moved to Brazil as a young man, also worked as a maquinista for the Santos a Jundiai railroad. He returned to Galicia in his late 40's, married Consuelo in 1917 or 1918 and had their first daughter Pastora in 1918. He went back and forth to Brazil, getting Consuelo pregnant four times, once on each visit. The first was Pastora, who moved to Argentina, the second Manoel, who died on August 27, 1997 about a week and a half before we visited. The third is Carmen and the youngest Pepe. Antonio finally moved back to Freans de Deva for good in 1927 at age 59 and died about five years later. His oldest daughter Pastora was 11 when Antonio died, and the youngest son, Pepe, was five.

Jose Rodriguez Rodriguez, his wife Carmen Codias Ceoani and brother Jose 'Pepe' Codias Ceoani, September 1997

Pepe moved to Santos, Brazil in 1952 at age 25 and stayed until 1966, when he was 39. He never married. Pepe worked as a waiter and lived with relatives. He ate his meals at the restaurant he worked at. He didn't earn much but received tips and ate well.

One time Pepe asked Grandpa Avelino to give him a job at the Companhia Docas. But Pepe didn't have much schooling and had no experience to do office work. Grandpa Avelino told him he could get him a job, but it would be to do menial work, earning very little. His meals would not be provided. So, if Pepe was happy working as a waiter, he was better off staying put at the restaurant.

Grandpa Avelino was famous for being strict and righteous. Possibly the result of working for the British owned São Paulo Railway, but more likely his personality. Tio Odilio told us the story of a Sunday dinner at Grandpa Avelino's home with the three sons (Avelino Filho known as Linoca, Nilo and Nivio). Grandpa Avelino still worked for the railroad and he and his family were entitled to free passage on the trains. The sons were entitled to this until they turned 21. Linoca had just turned 21 and was telling about a recent trip on the train to São Paulo and how wonderful it was to not have to pay. Grandpa Avelino demanded to know why Linoca was still travelling for free and promptly confiscated Linoca's railroad pass..

Pepe had a girlfriend in Brazil he would have liked to marry. But she said no. He thinks she said no because he was just a waiter and could not support a family. It became harder and harder for Pepe to keep a job in Brazil. At age 39 he returned home to Freans de Ponte Deva, to be a farmer like his father and grandfather before him. Unlike his father Antonio, he did not find a bride in Galicia. Some time after going back to Galicia he was hit and blinded in his left eye.

Pepe says that Brazil 'stole his youth'. He remembers Brazil fondly yet there were many disappointments. His youth is gone, his hair is gone ("It doesn't bother me any more" he says), he lives alone in a big house with chickens in the yard below.

Jose 'Pepe' Codias Ceoani, youngest brother of Carmen

Cousin Jose (Carmen's husband) was drafted into the Spanish Army at age 17 just at the end of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. The Nationalists led by Franco (Franco also was from Galicia) won the Civil War. Over 1.5 million Spaniards died in the Civil War. Galicia, being off in the top left corner of Spain, did not suffer as much as other parts of Spain. None of the cities of Galicia was bombed. Hitler and Mussolini supported Franco, so when the Second World War broke out, Franco provided troops to fight with the Germans and Italians. Cousin Jose fought in Northern Africa (Tunis, Algiers, Morocco) traveled throughout Spain (he says he went 15 or 20 times to Madrid while in the Army, and to countless other Spanish cities). After helping the Germans in North Africa, Franco agreed to send troops to help the Germans fight the Russians. So off went Cousin Jose, usually by train through Spain, France, Belgium Germany and Poland and then on foot, marching 1,300 kms to Moscow and Leningrad. He was very fortunate and survived, apparently unharmed.

Cousin Carmen and her sister Pastora and brothers Manoel and Jose lived two houses away from Cousin Jose when they were growing up. Cousin Jose liked Cousin Pastora, who was only one year younger than he. Cousin Carmen was the kid sister, five years younger than Jose. Jose thought he would marry Pastora when they became old enough. Then Jose went off to war. When he came back, Pastora was married to another young Galician and had two children. Her husband had moved to Argentina. Soon after Pastora joined him in Argentina. Cousin Pastora had three sons in all, all still alive and living in Buenos Aires. Their names are:

The address Cousin Pepe writes to the Argentinian cousins is:

Pasaje Coronda 3737
(1874) Sarandi
Buenos Aires, Argetina

As I said before, Cousin Pastora died about three years ago, and Cousin Manoel only about two weeks ago, so now there are only the two youngest Cousins alive, Carmen and Pepe.

Cousin Jose's experience in the Army may have inspired their only son, Jose Rodriguez Codias to join the Guardia Civil, where he became a highway traffic policeman. He and his wife live in Guardia Civil housing in the city of Purriño, very close to Vigo. Vigo is one of the principal ports of Galicia. Mom and Dad got lost and drove too far all the way into Vigo, trying to find the road that runs east through the lower portion of Galicia, along the Portuguese border and down into Castilla where Ciudad Rodrigo is. Vigo seems quite nice, very hilly and with lots and lots of traffic. It took quite a long time to get back out of Vigo.

Cousin Jose's only son Jose Rodriguez Codias (now 48, born on July 28,1949) married Delores Roriguez Conde. They have two children, Jose Miguel Rodriguez Rodriguez (born 1975) and Eva Rodriguez Rodriguez (born May 14,1979). Jose Miguel is now 22 and volunteered to join the Guardia Civil instead of being drafted into the Spanish Army. Since his Dad was already in the Guardia Civil and his Grandfather had been in the Spanish Army, Jose Miguel must have known that the Guardia Civil was the better choice. He committed to be in the Guadia Civil for three years at first. His Grandparents Cousin Jose and Cousin Carmen would like him to go to University and get a better joib than being a policeman.

Jose Miguel applied to join the special unit of the Guardia Civil that protects the Spanish King. There were over 4,500 applicants for about 150 positions at the time he applied. The exam was very difficult and he placed very near the top of the 150 that passed. There are 600 Guardia's in the King's security force. They are like bodyguards and don't wear uniforms so that you cannot tell if they are policemen or not. If someone wants to do harm to the King, they can't tell who his bodyguards are. It could be dangerous work, since the bodyguard has to put himself in the way of danger to protect the King. As Cousin Jose says, the bodyguards are the first to get shot. Jose Miguel lives in Madrid where the King's Palace is.

Eva is now 18 and is almost through with the Spanish equivalent of high school. She lives with her parents in Purriño. The Guardia Civil now has policewomen, just like the female policemen in the U.S. and the women Policia Militar in Brazil. With her Dad and older brother in the Guardia Civil, Eva is considering enlisting in the Guardia Civil herself. Her grandparents, Cousin Jose and Cousin Carmen are worried about this. In the villages of Galicia women do NOT wear a policemen's uniform. But times are changing.

One sign of the changing times is the volume of road construction going on in Spain and Portugal. Especially in Galicia, which was and possibly still is one of the poorest parts of Spain. Spain and Portugal are both part of the European Union (EU), a common market that joins about 15 countries from Portugal to Norway and from France to Austria. Switzerland won't join the EU, but that is another story. The EU is more than just a common market where goods and people can move around freely. All countries contribute a lot of money into a fund. The fund then considers which projects in each of the member countries should be built with money from the fund. The poorer countries like Portugal and Spain get more of the money because they have much more to build, like modern freeways. The trip from Vigo to Ciudad Rodrigo, just over 600 km, we did in 8 hours or so, with constant road construction most of the way. Every so many miles there is a big sign with the EU symbol saying that it is EU money that is building the new roads.

How to find our cousins home

Cousins Jose, Carmen and Pepe's little village don't show up on most maps, unless they are maps of the Ponte Deva Axuntamento. Axuntamento is Galician for Ajuntamento, which is the name given in Spain to a Brazilian municipio or an American county. Their address is:

Cortegada de Baños
Puente Deva, Freans
Orense, España

We bought a Michelin road map of Portugal on a scale of 4 kms per centimeter. This is a huge map showing all of Portugal and a strip of Spain along the Portuguese border. Uncle Odilio in Santos had said that the Cousins lived in a little village across a bridge from the River Deva. So, we looked for the River Deva on the map and found it, a smallish river running from A Cañiza and ending in the Minho River, which forms most of the border of Galicia and Portugal. We figured we would drive up the road that follows the river and when we came to a bridge, there it would be. So we crossed the Rio Minho at Monção, near the Quinta do Serade country home we stayed at for two nights, and drove along the Spanish side of the river. When we arrived in the little town of Arbo, just before the Rio Deva, we decided to stop and ask at the Arbo Axuntamento office for directions.

It turns out that our cousins do NOT live along the big Rio Deva like we thought, and instead live in the Axuntamento of Ponte Deva, near the larger Axuntamento of Cortegada de Baños. Both little towns show up on the Michelin road map, further along the border of Galicia and Portugal. We didn't notice the names on the map until we knew to look. Its amazing how you only find things if you are looking for them. We were advised to drive to Cortegada de Baños and ask for directions there. Well, Ponte Deva comes first along the road, so we decided to drive into it and ask for directions from anyone we could find. In Ponte Deva itself there is a little village every half mile or so. Names are repeated too.

We eventually found another, very small, Rio Deva, and a bridge over it, just before driving into the little village of Freans. We were told to ask for directions at the Bar do Rubio in Freans. The lady at the Bar do Rubio was saddened when she heard that we were looking for the Codias Ceoani's since she knew that Cousin Manoel had died just a week before. She pointed out his house to us, just across the road from the Bar. Cousin Manoel's wife (also named Carmen) was home, dressed all in black, the colors of mourning in both Spain and Portugal. She seemed exceedingly sad about the loss of her husband and a little puzzled about who we might be. The letter announcing our arrival must have arrived a few days after Manolo died and it is likely that in her grief, Carmen didn't even know that the letter arrived and thus who we were. Carmen is living with a sister. She insisted on bringing us water, wanted to feed us lunch. She stepped out and had her sister go call Pepe at his house about 50 meters up the road. Soon Pepe arrived, introduced himself and whisked us off to his sister Carmen's house. He explained that the widow Carmen was very 'decaida' (worn out) because of the passing of her husband. It was sad, in a way, to see little old Carmen working so hard to be a gracious hostess to us, these utter strangers, so soon after being widowed.

Carmen is an example of a Galician (and maybe a country phenomenon anywhere in the world) characteristic which is that the women are the hostesses. They hardly ever sit down during a visit, always busy fixing food, drink. When Pepe took us to visit old Cousin Benito in Crespos de Ponte Deva, we stood at the doorstep and had rather edgy conversation at first. Benito is the closest relative we have in Galicia, since he is a nephew of Joaquim Rodriguez and thus a first cousin to Tio Odilio and our Grandpa Avelino. Pepe and his sister Carmen are a great nephew and great niece of Joaquim Rodriguez. Benito's wife Palmira was 'no caminho' or, on her way home, when we arrived with Pepe. When Palmira returned she instantly invited us into the little wooden home (unlike virtually every other home we saw elsewhere, which are made of stone block). On the fuzzy black and white TV: bullfighting. Benito and Pepe seemed quite taken up the bullfighting, which made conversation difficult, until Palmira in a gracious gesture, snapped the TV off. We then had an animated conversation with Palmira, especially about her three children, all of whom live in Switzerland. There are two sons and a daughter. One of the sons has child called Dennis. A small world indeed.

Benito (Joaquim Rodriguez nephew by his half sister) and wife Palmira

Reading the paper the next day in Ciudad Rodrigo, the account of the previous day's bullfighting described the wonderful achievement of one matador, who was the only one that day to cut off the ear of a charging bull. Something like scoring a basket from mid-court or scoring an Olympic goal in soccer (an Olympic goal is scored straight in from a corner kick). Bullfighting does not appeal to me. We didn't see bullrings in Galicia (not that we looked) but several in the bigger villages of Castilla and very few in the little towns of Portugal near the border with Castilla. The Portuguese don't kill the bull, at least not in the bullring: they just torment the bull until it is thoroughly exhausted and either dies of a heart attack or is hauled off, presumably to turn into hamburger at a later date.

It was wonderful to be so warmly welcomed by our Galician relatives. We had never met before and spent only one afternoon together but it demonstrated that family ties transcend distance and time. I hope that at least some of those who read this page will have the opportunity to visit our relatives in Galicia while they are still with us.

Dennis G. Rodrigues

Text finished and posted on Easter Day April 15, 2001

Miami, Florida.

Write the author with suggestions and additions at: dennis57@ix.netcom.com