THE FRENCH WAY OF SAINT JAMES AND URBANISM IN MEDIEVAL GALICIA: THE CASE OF THE OLD BURG OF TRIACASTELA

Santa Maria de Vilavella is a little-known case of a village located on the French Way of Saint James, which rose under the auspices of an early medieval monastic community dedicated to assisting pilgrims. After an initial period of development in the 12th century, associated with the Way of Saint James, its decline as a commercial and transportation centre began when King Alfonso IX of Leon founded the new town of Triacastela in the first decades of the 13th century and moved the settlement to a more favourable crossroads nearby on the Jacobean route. Whereas Triacastela was successfully consolidated as the new territorial centre, as a transportation crossroads and walled town, the old village of Santa Maria de Vilavella kept its hamlet around the old monastic church, evolving like any other rural village in the Galician countryside, given that its main activity returned to the exploitation of agricultural and livestock resources.