Pontevedra

Pontevedra stands near the head of a Galician ria, where the Lérez meets sheltered Atlantic waters. It grew as a commercial center in the twelfth century and reached a high point as a center of trade and communications in the fifteenth. The town also lay on the Portuguese route of the Way of Saint James.

Commerce and fishing continued to support Pontevedra in the sixteenth century, when it was an important Galician port. Its fortunes declined from the end of that century. Sediment carried by the Lérez gradually made the harbor less suitable for larger vessels; trade also suffered amid political conflicts and epidemics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The town's fortunes were closely bound to its access to the sea and to the routes connecting Galicia's coastal settlements.