Village
Rianxo, officially in Galician, and Rianjo in Spanish, is a town of about 10,700 inhabitants situated between the ría of Arousa and the mouth of the river Ulla, in the comarca of Barbanza, less than 50 kilometres from Santiago de Compostela. Its name comes from the Latin rivus angulus, the bend of the river, after the shape the ría traces as it passes through the town. The territory has been inhabited since the Neolithic, some 4,000 years ago: on the slopes of Mount Lioira a megalithic necropolis with more than twenty burial mounds is preserved, and fourteen more mámoas appear at Alto de Burés and O Campiño. It lives today from sardines, shellfish gathering, mussel bateas and canning, catalogues more than fifty petroglyph sites and is the birthplace of Castelao and Rafael Dieste.
Monument
The hórreo do Araño, in the grounds of the Santa Baia do Araño rectory, in Rianxo, was built between 1784 and 1805 commissioned by the parish priest Rafael López Lago. It is considered the longest hórreo with the greatest capacity in Galicia: its chamber measures 36.75 metres in length, about two and a half metres in width, and reaches a volume of 109.31 cubic metres, to which are added another 59.09 cubic metres from the lower storehouse, closed in ashlar masonry and incorporating the access stairs. Both ends are topped with a cross flanked by pinnacles. Nearby the Hórreo Vivo festival is held, devoted to music in Galician and to showcasing the ethnographic heritage of the Araño.
Monument
A 17th-century manor house in the centre of Rianxo whose façade displays the arms of the Varela, Figueroa, Andrade and Soutomaior families; it underwent a full restoration completed in 2024.
Monument
The Casa Museo Manuel Antonio occupies the poet's birthplace, on Rúa de Abaixo in Rianxo, turned into a museum in 2010, and preserves family furniture, original documents and personal belongings of the writer. Manuel Antonio Pérez Sánchez, born in Rianxo in 1900 and who died in nearby Asados in 1930, is considered the foremost representative of avant-gardism in Galician literature; in 1922 he published, together with the painter Álvaro Cebreiro, the manifesto Máis alá!, critical of the literature he considered outdated. In his lifetime he published only De catro a catro (1928), written during his crossings as a pilot, a fundamental work of 20th-century Galician lyric poetry; the rest was published posthumously. Among his influences were Huidobro, Gerardo Diego and Apollinaire; in 1979 the Día das Letras Galegas was dedicated to him.
Nature
A height above the town of Rianxo commanding the ría de Arousa from which, on clear days, the towers of Santiago cathedral can be made out cut against the horizon to the north.
Curiosity
A Rianxeira is a popular Galician song composed in Buenos Aires in 1947 by the emigrant Anxo Romero Loxo, with lyrics by Xesús Freiro Dourado, known as Pinciñas; it was first called Ondiñas da nosa ría and has its origin in the traditional songs that accompanied the processions of the Virgin of Guadalupe, patron saint of Rianxo. It was premiered in 1948 by the Coro Castelao in Buenos Aires, although its official premiere is placed in 1950, on the occasion of Castelao's reception at the port of Buenos Aires. Despite its religious origin, the text is not strictly devotional, but rather an evocation of the Galician woman who works the sea, and today it functions as a kind of second Galician anthem.
Curiosity
Within barely a hundred metres of Rúa de Abaixo stand the houses of Castelao, Rafael Dieste and Manuel Antonio, all of them older than 1900; the municipal project turns them into a literary network unique in Galicia.
Curiosity
The image of the town's patron saint, the most popular black virgin in Galicia, made in 1773 in papier mâché as a replica of the Extremaduran original; every September it sails in a maritime procession across the ría de Arousa.
Activity
The patron saint festivities of the third weekend in September, with more than a century and a half of tradition; its maritime procession gathers more than a hundred decked-out boats and ends with the whole town singing A Rianxeira.
Monument
A 15th-century church raised beside the pazo do Martelo, an example of maritime Gothic with buttresses and pointed arches; at its font Castelao was baptised on 30 January 1886.
Monument
The Casa de Castelao is the family home where part of the life of Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao took place, at rúa de Abaixo no. 42 in Rianxo (Barbanza, A Coruña); a typical urban building of the Galician fishing towns of the late 19th century, declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 2007. It was bought by Mariano Rodríguez, Castelao's father, as his first investment on returning from Argentina an indiano; after the writer's exile the family suffered affronts and remained almost always shut in out of fear, and Teresa Castelao, the artist's sister, lived there until her death. It is a ground-floor-plus-two building with a hip roof, cast-iron balconies and a projecting body serving as a gallery. The town also preserves the house on rúa Cabo da Vila where the writer was born.
Activity
An itinerary that links the petroglyphs of Rianxiño, A Foxa Vella and Os Mouchos with the castro of Rianxiño and the mámoas of O Corniño and Os Campiños, in a concello with fifty-nine catalogued rock art stations.
Curiosity
The petroglyphs of Os Mouchos are a set of rock carvings from the Bronze Age, dated between 1200 and 600 BC, spread across three granite rock outcrops in the parish of Santa María de Leiro, within the municipality of Rianxo. They bring together more than sixty representations, mostly zoomorphic -deer, horses, an anthropomorphic figure riding one of them- together with geometric motifs of concentric circles and cup marks, typical of the Atlantic rock-art style. It is the best-known rock-art site of a municipality with dozens of inventoried locations, though also one of the most threatened: nearby works and an act of vandalism in 2015 have put its conservation at risk. It is registered as a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
Curiosity
The hórreo (raised granary) of Araño, in the municipality of Rianxo, forms a monumental group with the parish church of Santa Baia and the chapel of Nosa Señora dos Milagres. With a chamber 36.75 metres long (37.05 with the base) it is the longest hórreo in Galicia, and with 109.31 m³ in the chamber plus 59.09 m³ in the celeiro at the base, also the one with the greatest capacity. It was built at the end of the 18th century, between 1784 and 1805, commissioned by the parish priest Rafael López Lago, next to the rectory of Araño. It is built of rubble masonry, with a continuous rat-guard course and a chamber closed with horizontal perpiaños, and its two end walls are topped with a cross flanked by pinnacles. In its surroundings the Hórreo Vivo festival is held, devoted to music in Galician and to promoting the ethnographic heritage of the place.
Activity
A summer event of the port of Rianxo at which raft-grown mussel is served steamed, in vinaigrette, marinated, in empanada, in croquettes and in a surf-and-turf stew with beans and pork belly.
Historical milestone
Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao, physician, draftsman and one of the central figures of Galicianism, was born on the rúa Cabo da Vila in Rianxo and was baptized the following day, 30 January 1886, in the church of Santa Comba.
Historical milestone
King Ramiro II, who reigned between 931 and 951, handed over the town of Rianxo and its possessions to the See of Santiago, which, through the Compostela chapter, exercised feudal jurisdiction for centuries over this shore of the Ría de Arousa.
Activity
Held on dates close to Santiago, 25 July, it exalts the xouba, the small sardine of the ría of Arousa, grilled over embers but also pickled, in an empanada or accompanied by cachelos, bread and local wine.
Monument
The castelo da Lúa is an archaeological site containing the remains of a medieval castle at the place called do Pazo, in the parish of Santa Comba, in Rianxo (A Coruña), next to the beach of la Torre. Probably built in the 13th century by Paio Gómez Chariño, it later passed to the Templars and then to the archdiocese of Compostela; demolished by the irmandiños around 1465 and rebuilt by Sueiro Gómez de Sotomayor, Chariño's great-grandson, it fell again in 1480 to the royal governor Fernando de Acuña. Its ruins served as a prison until 1532, when they passed to Archbishop Alonso II de Fonseca; already in ruins by around 1600, its stones were used in 1740 in the bell tower of Santa Comba de Rianxo. Excavations carried out in 2001-2007 revealed its trapezoidal plan, with walls, a moat and a keep.