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Legend of Ponte Maceira

Negreira, Barcala, A Coruña

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Legend of Ponte Maceira

Curiosity · Negreira, Barcala, A Coruña

The legend of the Ponte Maceira, already recorded in the Codex Calixtinus, tells that the disciples of the apostle Santiago, pursued by the Roman legionaries who would not let them bury their beheaded master, crossed this bridge over the río Tambre, and that when their pursuers tried to cross it too, the bridge collapsed behind them through divine intervention. The episode was recorded on the coat of arms of the concello of Negreira since 1866 and turned the place, already an obligatory crossing point on the Way to Fisterra, into one of the best-known Jacobean legends of the comarca. The present bridge, with five large arches and two small ones, was built in the thirteenth century on the piers of an earlier Roman bridge, in the hamlet of A Ponte Maceira, parish of Portor, which today has just over sixty inhabitants.

Photo: Jule_Berlin (CC BY 2.0)

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