Village
Ribeira, also called Riveira, is a concello of about 27,000 inhabitants situated at the southernmost tip of the province of A Coruña, at the point of the do Barbanza peninsula, between the rías of Arousa and Muros-Noia. Its capital is Santa Uxía de Ribeira, and the municipality, divided into nine parishes, has one of the most active inshore fishing ports in Galicia and Europe, with significant canning activity. Its coastline brings together beaches such as those of Coroso, Touro, Castiñeiras and Aguiño, as well as those of Corrubedo, within the dune natural park that bears its name. Within its boundaries also lie that protected area and the Axeitos dolmen. The place name Ribeira, documented since 1387, comes from the Latin riparia, 'bank of the river or the sea'.
Nature
The Axeitos dolmen, also called the anta de Axeitos or Pedra do Mouro, is one of the best-known megalithic funerary monuments in Galicia. It is located in the parish of San Martiño de Oleiros, in the municipality of Ribeira, within the Barbanza peninsula, and is a passage grave with chamber dated to the 4th millennium BC, formed by seven orthostats supporting a large capstone, with the passage oriented to the east. Small in size, it stands out for the balance of its forms; no finds are known from its interior, attributed to looting suffered over time. Declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) on 11 March 1978, it belongs to the Diputación de La Coruña.
Monument
The Cabo Corrubedo lighthouse was lit on 20 February 1854 at the southern entrance to the ría de Muros, on the Cabo Corrubedo peninsula (parish of Corrubedo, Ribeira), on a low, flat headland, to warn of the shoals surrounding the point; it had third-order optics and a range of fifteen miles, and in 1882 its red danger sector was reinforced. Several accidents, caused by sailors confusing it with the Sálvora lighthouse, forced its refurbishment in 1921. It is managed by the Autoridad Portuaria de Villagarcía de Arosa.
Monument
A first lamp lit the point of Besugueiros from 1852, but it was decided to move it to a higher level, and the present lighthouse was inaugurated in December 1921, barely a few days before the wreck of the steamer Santa Isabel.
Monument
An isolated rock in a pine grove near Figueirido, in the parish of Palmeira, with two carved zoomorphic figures each representing a goat; each animal has six legs, perhaps a device to suggest movement. The carvings were made in the Copper Age, between 2200 and 1800 BC, on a large block of granite.
Nature
The parque natural do Complexo Dunar de Corrubedo, declared on 15 June 1992 as Galicia's second natural park, protects 996 hectares of dune system, marshland and lagoons at the western tip of the Barbanza peninsula, within Ribeira, between the ría de Arousa and that of Muros e Noia. It is also recognised as a special area of conservation, a special protection area for birds, a protected Galician wetland and a Ramsar wetland; the Sálvora archipelago and its marine surroundings, together with part of the Porto do Son coastline, also fall within the conservation area, which extends the protected surface to close to 9,265 hectares. Thus the coast between Cabo de Corrubedo and the castro de Baroña, as well as the Carregal and Vixán lagoons, fall under this joint protection.
Nature
A living ridge of sand close to a kilometre long, 250 metres wide and some fifteen metres high, which the wind pushes inland; it is the largest mobile dune on the Galician coast.
Nature
The Carregal and Vixán lagoons are part of the parque natural de las Dunas de Corrubedo y Lagunas de Carregal y Vixán, at the western tip of the Barbanza peninsula, between the ría de Arousa and that of Muros y Noya, within the municipality of Ribeira. They are two contrasting wetlands: Carregal, brackish and connected to the sea beyond the sandbar, and Vixán, freshwater and surrounded by reed beds where thousands of birds winter. The complex, covering 996 hectares, is declared a special area of conservation and a special protection area for birds, as well as a Ramsar wetland of international importance, and its scope has been proposed for extension to 9,264 hectares to also include the Sálvora archipelago and the waters surrounding it.
Nature
A beach some 3,500 metres long and thirty metres wide, the main beach of the Corrubedo natural park, backed by dune vegetation; its constant wind and swell make it popular with surfers.
Nature
The illa de Sálvora is a small island located at the mouth of the ría de Arousa which, together with the islands of Vionta, Herbosa and Noro and the Sagres islands, forms the Sálvora archipelago, part since 2002 of the Parque Nacional das Illas Atlánticas de Galicia. It was inhabited, with farming, livestock and fishing activity, until 1972, and was privately owned until 2007; today it preserves an almost uninhabited hamlet with eight hórreos, a washhouse, a warehouse from the late 18th century enlarged in the 1960s with pazo-style air towers, a former tavern converted into a chapel, the lighthouse, a jetty, a cruceiro, two mills and a statue of a mermaid. It also preserves Atlantic scrubland inhabited by horses and deer.
Curiosity
In the early hours of 2 January 1921 the steamer Santa Isabel sank off Sálvora; with almost all the men ashore for the festivities, it was the island's women who put out in rowing boats and saved 48 people.
Curiosity
A sculpture known as Mariña that Joaquín Otero Goyanes, Marquis of Revilla, had raised in 1956 beside the island's jetty in memory of the legend that traces the Mariño lineage back to a mermaid.
Curiosity
A traditional boat of the Rías Bajas, small, with overlapping planks and a lateen sail, used for inshore fishing and shellfish gathering; since 1952 dornas have been raffled off and given to sailors of limited means. It measures about 4.5 metres in length and 1.5 metres in beam, with a rounded bow projecting beyond the deck, a flat stern and a pronounced keel; it is built clinker-style, with wooden planks overlapping one another to reduce leaks. It carries a single sail and two auxiliary oars for when the wind is lacking, and is crewed by a skipper, at the tiller, and a sailor in charge of hoisting the sail. Various studies point to a Viking origin, introduced into the rías as a smaller-scale copy of the drakkar during the raids that sought Santiago de Compostela.
Activity
Born in 1948, when neighbours pooled their money to buy a dorna and give it to a poor person, organising a festival around it, it is held every year in Ribeira around 24 July and has been declared Fiesta de Interés Turístico de Galicia (an official tourism distinction awarded to notable festivals) since 2005. Organised by peñas under the coordination of the Lajareu por Barlovento association and the Real e Ilustre Cofradía da Dorna, it brings together activities such as a sailing dorna regatta, carrilana races, a regatta of hand-built boats and jumps from the harbour with contraptions that help you fly, as well as a recital of peña songs around the bars. It has its own anthem, composed by Santi Páramo and performed by Os Diplomáticos de Montealto and Ancoradoiro.
Activity
A boat trip that sets out from the jetties of the ría towards the largest island of the archipelago; landing requires the prior permit the national park imposes, and the village and the lighthouse are visited on guided routes.
Monument
Parish church of the town of Ribeira, capital of the Barbanza comarca, already documented in the year 1200, built between 1861 and 1864 to a design by the architect Faustino Domínguez Domínguez, also the author of the churches of Santa María de Oza, Santa María de Ordes and San Nicolás de A Coruña, with similar façades to one another. It has a Latin-cross plan with side chapels, a central nave covered by a barrel vault on transverse arches, and a crossing topped by a dome. The walls are of dressed rubble masonry and the main façade of granite ashlar, austere in decoration, flanked by two bell towers unadorned save for the cornices. Above the rectangular doorway a semicircular window opens, lighting the choir.
Nature
A fortified Iron Age settlement set on a height that commands the mouth of the ria of Arousa and its islands; it forms a pair with the coastal castro do Porto de Baixo, already at the water's edge. It lies between the parishes of San Xián de Artes and San Paio de Carreira, on the summit of the hill, and preserves an oval enclosure of about 98 by 65 metres, protected to the north and west by earthworks and to the east and south by natural rocks acting as a wall. Excavations in 2014 and 2015 uncovered fifteen dwellings from the castro period, as well as a 17th-century ship-watching hut built on top of them. Its slopes also preserve remains of mámoas, burial mounds damaged by 20th-century logging and stone quarrying.
Curiosity
The Pedra das Cabras is a petroglyph located at the place of Figueirido, in the parish of Palmeira, within the municipality of Ribeira, in the Barbanza comarca. The carvings were made in the Copper Age, between 2200 and 1800 BC, on a large granite batholith: the drawing depicts two animals, possibly goats, each with six legs, a feature that may represent the animals' movement. The piece is part of the dense rock-art complex of the Barbanza, where numerous rocks carved with animal figures and concentric circles are scattered across the hills that look over the ria.
Nature
A freshwater lagoon separated from the sea by the dune ridge of Corrubedo and a refuge for wintering water birds; together with the brackish lagoon of Carregal it completes the complex protected as a natural park.
Activity
A festival organised since 1997 by the fishermen's guild of Aguiño around the goose barnacle torn from the wave-beaten rocks of the coast, a shellfish whose gathering is shared out by turns and quotas among the percebeiros.
Food and drink
The Ribeira fish market is the one that lands the most fresh fish and shellfish in Galicia, close to twenty-nine thousand tonnes a year; at its small-hours auction the price of sardine, horse mackerel, hake and blue whiting is set.
Historical milestone
Alfonso XIII granted the title of city to Santa Uxía de Ribeira, municipal capital since 1836 and by then already a great fishing port of the comarca; in 1820 separate concellos had come to exist at Carreira, Olveira, Palmeira and Ribeira.
Activity
In the seafaring parish of Palmeira the empanada is kneaded with maize flour, as is characteristic in this comarca, and each year a festival makes it the star of a popular open-air meal.
Curiosity
On the monte da Cidá, parish of Carreira, a granite mass of some fifteen metres resting on smaller blocks draws, seen from the west, the profile of a frog with its mouth open; the viewpoint was rebuilt in 2016.