Basilica of Santa María, Portugalete: A Historic Parish Church in Spain
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Spain
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Crown of Castile, Spanish
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Basilica
On this page14 sections
History
The Basilica of Santa María, Portugalete, is a Roman Catholic parish church in Spain dedicated to Saint Mary, the Christian title for Mary, the mother of Jesus. Its history began with a small Gothic church erected in 1322 on the orders of María Díaz de Haro, Lady of Biscay, the female holder of the Lordship of Biscay, as required by Portugalete’s town charter.
Foundation and expansion
The first church had a wooden roof, but it could no longer accommodate Portugalete’s growing population as commerce expanded during the fifteenth century. Construction of the present building began in 1480 and apparently continued until about 1580. Juan de Garita served as master builder from 1530, and his work is also associated with the church’s Renaissance architectural features.
The church became a setting for the religious, commemorative, and artistic activities of Portugalete’s prominent families. The Salazar, Uríbarri, Coscojales, Retuerto, and Ugarte families supported chapels, funerary monuments, grilles, and works of art. A bequest from Lope García de Salazar y Mena, provost of Portugalete, who died in 1536, financed the high altarpiece.
Tower and wartime destruction
The church’s Baroque tower was built between 1691 and 1750 to designs by Lucas Longa. Manuel Arróspide completed the belfry from 1740. During the Third Carlist War, a nineteenth-century Spanish civil conflict shaped by competing claims to the throne and related political and religious divisions, bombardment destroyed the entire upper part of the tower in 1873. Casto de Zabala and Francisco Berriozabal designed its reconstruction, completed in 1887.
Recognition and modern conservation
Pope Pius XII granted the church the status of a minor basilica on 27 February 1951. This papal title recognizes a church’s religious and historical importance and is distinct from the category of major basilicas associated especially with Rome. In 1984, the building was declared a cultural-interest property as a historic-artistic monument. It is also recognized as notable Basque built heritage and lies on the coastal route of the Way of Saint James within a World Heritage site.
A comprehensive restoration carried out between 1992 and 1994 changed the interior arrangement and treated the building’s architectural and artistic fabric. The work included cleaning and treating the altarpieces, images, and other furnishings, repainting the vault surfaces, and cleaning the stonework. It also brought to light the Renaissance funerary monument in the Salazar Chapel, which had been concealed behind a Neo-Gothic altarpiece.
The former modern sacristy, built in 1900 in Neo-Gothic style beside the Epistle nave, ceased to serve that purpose in 1983 and became a parish museum in 1996. Furnishings and images removed during the restoration were transferred there. The Basilica of Santa María Bibliographic and Documentation Centre opened in 1998 with an exhibition of its collected material. Its holdings concern aspects of Portugalete’s life and history and the history of the church. The parish remains part of the Diocese of Bilbao and is served by secular clergy, diocesan priests who do not belong to a religious order.
Remains
The basilica has a basilical plan without a transept, with three naves divided into five bays. The side naves are lower than the central nave, whose weight is carried by flying buttresses and external buttresses. At the east end, the scarcely developed chancel finishes in a central three-sided octagonal apse. Clustered piers support the cross-ribbed vaults, while an ornamental triforium, a narrow arcaded gallery opening into the nave, runs along the walls of the central nave.
Exterior and entrances
The main entrance lies beneath the tower, which encloses the vestibule. The principal western doorway is a seventeenth-century proto-Baroque work. On the northern, or Gospel, side, the Portal of the Ribera opens into the second bay. This Renaissance doorway was made by the master stonemason Juan de Garita. Two medieval gargoyles shaped as grotesque figures are incorporated into the outer buttresses.
Renaissance chapels
Salazar Chapel
The former Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows, now called the Salazar Chapel, occupies the third bay of the Gospel nave. Its Renaissance funerary monument is set in an arcosolium, a tomb beneath a recessed arched opening in a wall. The 1990s restoration uncovered it behind a Neo-Gothic altarpiece dedicated to the Virgin of Sorrows. Because the monument was in poor condition, it was reconstructed as closely as possible from comparable examples, with the triangular pediment and side columns newly made.
The monument carries the Salazar coat of arms, but the identities of its recumbent figures remain uncertain. The most probable interpretation identifies the kneeling figure on the left as Pedro Salazar y Butrón and the buried couple as his son Pedro González de Salazar and his daughter-in-law Elvira Díez de Ullíbarri. An inscription reportedly linked Pedro González de Salazar y Arana with a chapel ordered in 1537 for his father’s remains. The coats of arms instead suggest that the funerary chapel may have been the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception. The grille closing the chapel was paid for by the Retuerto family in the nineteenth century.
Chapel of the Adoration of the Magi
The Chapel of the Adoration of the Magi fills the fourth bay of the Gospel nave. The Coscojales and Salazar families paid for it, and their coats of arms flank the chapel. Its two mid-sixteenth-century Renaissance niches contain a statue of Saint Roch, patron of Portugalete, in a semicircular recess and a modern Pietà made in 1997 in a pilaster-and-pediment niche.
The chapel’s principal work is a mid-sixteenth-century altarpiece showing the Adoration of the Magi. Guiot and Juan de Beaugrant, brothers born in Lorraine, created the sculptural ensemble. Its animated figures and strong naturalism contrast with the idealized treatment of the Virgin, characteristics that place the work within Mannerism, a sixteenth-century style known for heightened movement and deliberately stylized forms.
Chapel of the Immaculate Conception
The Chapel of the Immaculate Conception occupies the fourth bay of the Epistle nave. Five coats of arms belonging to the Salazar and Uríbarri families decorate its ceiling. An early twentieth-century Neo-Gothic altarpiece, formerly in the Salazar Chapel, contains reliefs of the Pietà, Christ’s fall on the way to Calvary, and the Agony in the Garden. A statue of the Immaculate Conception occupies its centre.
Chapel of the Christ of the Portal
A chapel built in 1542 in the third bay of the Epistle nave houses the Christ of the Portal, a Hispano-Flemish Gothic sculpture from about 1490 to 1500. Hispano-Flemish art combines Iberian and Flemish influences. The sculpture formerly stood in a chapel of the same name in a Portugalete square. During the Spanish Civil War, it was removed for burning, survived, and was later cleaned and restored before being installed in the basilica.
The chapel also contains a Neoclassical altarpiece made around 1800. Saint Anthony occupies its centre, with Saint Teresa and the Virgin and Child positioned at the sides.
Chapel of Saint James
The chapel in the second bay of the Epistle nave was commissioned in 1569 by Juan de Ugarte, a captain and merchant. He and his wife, Teresa Gómez de Matiartu y Butrón, are buried beneath a floor slab. A Renaissance wrought-iron grille dated 1569 closes the chapel. Its attribution to the Beaugrant workshop remains conjectural.
The chapel’s principal altarpiece is dedicated to Saint James the Moor-Slayer and was probably made by Otxoa de Murueta, an assistant of Guiot de Beaugrant. The two donors appear as sculptures at the bottom of the altarpiece, one on each side.
High altarpiece and eastern furnishings
The high altarpiece is a major Renaissance work assembled within an architectural framework by Juan Imberto. Its structure has a predella, the lower section of an altarpiece, three tiers, and an attic divided into three streets and four inter-streets. Streets are the main vertical divisions, while inter-streets are the narrower divisions between them.
Juan de Beaugrant carved the right-hand section from 1533, and Juan de Ayala made the central and left-hand sections from 1549. The work was completed by Beaugrant and Ayala around 1555, although limited funds prevented a complete polychrome finish. Andrés de Rada painted the central street in a Rococo style in 1749, and the altarpiece was restored between 1986 and 1988.
A fourteenth-century Gothic statue of Saint Mary presides over the central street. Above it are scenes of the Annunciation, the Assumption, and the Trinity. The side streets contain scenes from the life of Christ and sculptures of the Evangelists, Apostles, and Fathers of the Church, influential early Christian theologians and writers. Beaugrant’s figures are more expressive and elegant, while Ayala’s are less dynamic. The stone plinth bears the coat of arms and figure of Lope García de Salazar y Mena, whose bequest funded the work.
The head bays of the side naves stand on either side of the presbytery. Their furnishing arrangement was changed during the 1990s restoration. The Gospel nave contains a high-quality, strongly colored triptych of the Coronation of the Virgin by an unknown artist. The Epistle nave contains a panel of the Virgin of the Pear with the Child, also depicting the Coronation of the Virgin and following a print by Albrecht Dürer, the German Renaissance artist and printmaker.
Liturgical objects and furnishings
The new Neo-Gothic sacristy holds liturgical metalwork and other objects. Among them are the former Pietà from the Chapel of the Adoration of the Magi; late-sixteenth-century chrism vessels and a chalice commissioned by Juan de Ugarte for his Chapel of Saint James; and a 1641 Baroque gilt-silver monstrance of Peruvian origin donated by Admiral Ballecilla. A monstrance displays the consecrated host. The collection also includes an eighteenth-century group of cruets, a case for chrism vessels, and two silver chalices, together with a Mexican group of a silver monstrance, chalice, and ciborium from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. A ciborium is a covered vessel for consecrated communion wafers, while cruets hold wine or water used during the liturgy.
A seventeenth-century Baroque baptismal font stands in the first bay of the Gospel nave. The pulpit combines a fifteenth-century polygonal stone base with Neo-Gothic woodwork. The church’s Romantic organ has three keyboards and was built by the French firm Henri Didier of Épinal between 1901 and 1903. It replaced a Baroque organ made in 1758 by Lorenzo de Arrázola and was repaired in 1995 by the Usabiaga brothers of Hernani.
