ChaguazosoChurch of Santiago
The parish church of Santiago de Chaguazoso, erected in the 17th century and rebuilt in 1964, had an altarpiece carved by the memorable Galician sculptor Xosé Ferreiro (1738-1830), the same who carved the magnificent altarpiece of the church of A Esculqueira. Perhaps Ferreiro, disciple and son-in-law of another great sculptor, Xosé Gambino, arrived at the neighbouring town hall of Hermisende in his old age, after the death of his wife, a daughter and a granddaughter.
The temple has a neoclassical façade and high quality ashlar masonry. It seems that some of the images preserved inside are the work of the baroque sculptor born in Noia.
Chaguazoso is an abundance of chaguazo, a noun that designates two very different things; it can refer to a waterlogged land (there are 14 fountains in the parish) or to a shrub of the cistáceas family (in Spanish jaguarzo) of which there are several species, with whitish leaves on the underside.
A lost altarpiece
According to Pérez Constanti (1898), the altarpiece of the high altar in the church that preceded the present one was of a composite order and stood out for the richness of its ornamentation. The former archivist of the Town Hall of Santiago describes it as follows:
"In the central dressing room of the first body of the one in Chaguazoso, an image of the Virgin is seen under a well carved ogival canopy, and on pedestals at the sides of the niche that in the second body guards the equestrian statue of the patron saint Santiago, two beautiful cherubs holding green palms in the respective right hand."
