Bueu. Massó museum

About this heritage

The Massó Museum is located in the centre of Bueu, very close to the port, in the industrial buildings of the former Massó Hermanos canning factory.

Guillermo Marconi in his visit to the factory in 1928 suggested the idea of creating a museum as he had been surprised by the collection of navigational instruments, documents and antique books, curious objects and models of historical ships.

The Massó brothers listened to him and built a floor over the oldest building. In 1932 the Massó Museum was born.

In 1994, after factory´s closure, the museum was acquired by the Xunta de Galicia (Galician government) and is now open to the public. It also has a valuable library specializing in maritime and naval subjects, and the 20 incunabula - books printed in the early years of the printing press (1453-1500)- stand out.

The museum is divided into four parts. The first is a large room on the first floor, where the exhibition is structured around the idea of the sea´s conquest. It is dedicated to navigation and disciplines such as astronomy, geography and shipbuilding, which made possible its development and that of maritime trade. The room preserves the original museography of the 1930s.

A second room is located on the ground floor and is dedicated to the exploitation of the sea's resources. Archaeological materials from the salting factory and the amphora´s workshop from the Roman period (2nd-4th century) from the Roman site of Pescadoira are on display. The speech focuses on the industrial activity of the Massó family: their salting and canning factories and whaling, showing a unique collection in Spain.

The third room deals with traditional boats. Three of the most representative boats of the Pontevedra estuary are exhibited: the “dorna", the “polbeiro" boat and the big wreck of the last boat “xeiteira".

The last room is dedicated to the old salting plant where eighteen piles from an old salting plant from the beginning of the 19th century, acquired by the Massó family in 1900 to be used as an anchovy store, were recovered.

To learn more

Located in a port´s dock, in addition to the modern boats you can see traditional ones. Thanks to the association “Os Galos”, today you can enjoy some of these boats, of which are responsible for restoring and even building some new ones.

The “polbeiro” boat, also known as the Bote de Bueu, is docked there. It is a unique and exclusive boat of this city council, of which only 3 samples remain: this one, in the Massó Museum and the one in the Museum of the Sea in Barcelona.

The main characteristic is that the prow is not different from the stern (it has two prows), it is pointed at the ends, and its shape - because it has half a length - gives it a rounded aspect, similar to an open walnut shell.

This shape gives it a great stability. In addition, its structure is made of oak wood, which makes it much more resistant, and ideal for fishing octopus from the rocks. In this boat, due to its size, only one or two crew members could be on board, and it was used for octopus fishing.

The propulsion´s method, like the other boats, was either rowing or sailing, depending on the winds.

In the 1960s it was no longer used because the outboard motor could not be incorporated and because of its slowness it no longer compensated.

The “xeiteiro” boat is similar to the polbeiro boat, although it is more elongated, larger, and more stylized. It is dedicated to pilchard fishing with the gear known as xeito, hence its name. As the boat was bigger, they could took more crew members (3-5) and they used to go out fishing 2 or 3 days in a row, that's why inside the boat they had a stone to roast sardines.

There is also the Dorna xeiteira which is a boat that has its origin in the Middle Ages, since it shares with the Viking´s longships its construction´s system of calime or lapstrake. It is dedicated to pilchard fishing. It remains in use today because an outboard motor was incorporated into it.

The Dorna is a very stylish, stable and fast ship that can be carried by a single person. Oak or cork oak wood is used for the keel. In addition to octopus, sardine, xouba and piobardo are caught with it. A variant is the Dorna polbeira which is smaller and is used for octopus fishing.

For pilchard fishing they saw the need for bigger boats to get more catches, they imported a traditional type of boat from the Basque Country, the Trainera. Its name derives from the word “traíña": a very dense mesh net for anchovies and sardines fishing. It is a light, fast and large boat that can carry 10 crew members. Today it is used in sports practices as in the regattas. These competitions have their origin in the Basque sailors who competed to be the first ones to the port, in order to sell fish at a better price.

To know it better

In Bueu´s port, in the industrial buildings of the old Massó Hermanos canning factory, we can visit the Massó Museum. The idea of its creation came up during one of Guillermo Marconi's visits to the cannery. He was amazed at the number of ancient instruments, documents and books that were preserved in the place. It was precisely then that the implementation of this project was put on the table. The Massó brothers listened to Marconi and in 1932 they created the museum that, a few years later, in 1994, would pass into the hands of the Xunta de Galicia (Galician government). At present, it has become a place that must be visited within this city council located in Pontevedra´s province.

The Massó Museum has two rooms with quite distinguished elements. In the first one, we can find traditional boats, explanations about the canning industry and about the fish salting technique, which are documented with photographs of the old factory. The second room focuses on the Catalan Massó family, as well as a collection of nautical elements and models. On the other hand, in this same space, we can learn about carpentry, as the different instruments used to build traditional boats are shown.