The Spanish Armada: The Irish Experience
On 21st September 1588, a vessel built in the Barcelona town on Mataró, filled with provisions and men, well used to the navigation in the Mediterranean, gave up in a terrible storm to inevitably sink in the beach of Streedagh Strand. More than four hundred years after, the recovered cannons from the wreckage site in 2015 are the most valuable arqueologic finding until date from La Juliana. But that vessel and that sandy area of Streedagh. With the Ben Bulben as a witness, keeps since then, other secrets…
Would you like to hear this story? David Revelles will share it with us in his conference The (other) secrets of La Juliana.
Revelles’ talk will be followed by Fionbarr Moore’s conference, The Spanish Armada shipwrecks at Streedagh Co. Sligo: Recent discoveries and on-going investigations by the Underwater Archaeology Unit of the National Monuments Service. Moore is currently directing the UAU investigation of the Spanish Armada wreck sites at Streedagh, Co. Sligo.
The history of La Juliana will be presented, illustrating also how it might have looked originally. An update will be given on the on-going conservation of the excavated material in the National Museum of Ireland’s conservation facility in Collins Barracks.
David Revelles (1975) is a journalist. He has published several articles in El País about the historical trace of the Invincible in Ireland, and in particular, about the findings of La Juliana. He is a professor at the Universitat Autònoma in Barcelona, at the end of 2015 published his book En los confines de Hibernia, a project which culminates his work to find the historical, archaeological and legendary heritage of the Spanish Armada in Ireland.
Fionnbarr Moore is a senior archaeologist with the National Monuments Service, Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs and he has been head of the Underwater Archaeology Unit (UAU) since 1999. He has contributed papers and chapters to a number of journals and books on underwater archaeology and maritime history and has a particular interest in the Early Medieval and Medieval periods. Moore is chair of the European Archaeological Consilium’s Underwater Cultural Heritage Working Group (EAC UCH WG) and he is also a former Council member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI) and of the Discovery Programme (Centre for Irish Archaeological Research).
Admission free. In Spanish and English with simultaneous interpreting.
