Village
Malpica de Bergantiños is a concello of about 5,200 inhabitants on the Costa da Morte, whose fishing port is documented from the 13th century, when the town belonged to the lordship of the archbishop of Compostela; in the 15th century, Sancho de Ulloa, count of Monterrey, seized it from the archbishop Alonso II de Fonseca. Until 1916 it was called simply Malpica, the year it took its present name to distinguish it from other municipalities of the same name. Its capital sits on a peninsula with the fishing port on one side and the Arena Mayor beach on the other, facing the Sisargas islands, a refuge for seabirds. In the parish of Buño a traditional pottery craft survives, and at Mens medieval towers and Romanesque buildings remain.
Monument
The Torres de Mens are a castle built in the 15th century by Lope Sánchez de Moscoso after the irmandiña revolts, on an earlier fortress destroyed in the irmandiña uprising of 1467 and itself built on an ancient castro, in the hamlet of Mens, in the municipality of Malpica de Bergantiños. The complex consists of a dwelling and three square towers that lost their battlements, surrounded by a circular walled enclosure; the main, L-shaped block ends in a turned turret, and at one corner a wooden balcony projects on stone corbels. The entrance opens through a Gothic arch in one of the towers. In the 20th century the Abelenda family restored it as a dwelling; the restoration received the Europa Nostra award in 1993, and since 1994 it has been registered as a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
Monument
A Romanesque temple with a basilical plan whose origins go back to the 10th century, neighbouring the Torres de Mens; popular tradition holds that an underground passage linked the manor fortress with the parish church. It was declared a National Monument in 1979 and formed part of an ancient monastery whose abbot Recamundo is documented from 1078; in 1499 it became a priory of the Benedictine monastery of San Martiño Pinario and later came under the Collegiate Church of A Coruña. Of its three parallel naves and three apses an almost square plan survives, since a 19th-century reform removed the first sections of the side aisles and the original Romanesque facade.
Nature
An archipelago of three islands, Sisarga Grande, Sisarga Pequena and Malante, covering 0.8 square kilometres 750 metres off the cabo de Santo Hadrián, on the Costa da Morte, and belonging to the municipality of Malpica de Bergantiños; arranged in an inverted L shape and separated by narrow channels, the largest of the three, Sisarga Grande, reaches 100 metres in altitude and holds a lighthouse and a small jetty. It is designated a ZEPA (Special Protection Area for Birds) for its colonies of lesser black-backed gull, kittiwake and common guillemot, birds that are scarce in Galicia and across the Iberian Peninsula and that find here one of their largest colonies, together with significant populations of European shag, Alpine swift, yellow-legged gull and red-billed chough.
Nature
The praia de Area Maior lies beside the fishing harbour of Malpica de Bergantiños, on a beach facing north, pounded by waves all year round, which made it a training ground and meeting point for surfers. Close to the village's seafront promenade, it is also a resting spot for travellers; to the northwest come, in succession, the beach of Seaia and the cabo de San Adrián. Together with Seaia and Baldaio, it completes the municipality's stretch of open beaches.
Curiosity
An ethnographic complex in the pottery quarter of Buño where a traditional wood-fired kiln is preserved; it shows the clay-firing techniques that made the village the capital of Galician folk ceramics.
Activity
A pottery fair held between the end of July and the beginning of August in the village of Buño, with more than forty editions behind it; it brings together the last earthenware workshops in Galicia with demonstrations of throwing and firing.
Curiosity
A tower of concrete and granite raised in 1995 on a cape open to the sea, the work of the architect César Portela; its prow pointed towards the ocean and the bronze sculpture that accompanies it make it unmistakable.
Activity
A pilgrimage festival held on the first Sunday after 16 June that brings together the people of the concello's parishes around the hermitage, with a procession, auctions of offerings and a dance afterwards.
Historical milestone
In the early 17th century Malpica de Bergantiños became famous for whale hunting, a task carried out from land in collaboration with Cantabrian and Basque sailors, who spotted the cetaceans and set out after them in whaleboats; the oil was sold inland.
Activity
A port festival in honour of the workers of the sea at which the fish and shellfish landed at the local market are cooked and handed out, from bonito to octopus and sardine.
Curiosity
The hamlet of Buño keeps alive the greatest pottery tradition in Galicia: red clay still worked on a kick wheel and fired in traditional wood kilns to make casseroles, pots and pans, a domestic ware of ochre tones glazed on the inside that is sold throughout Galicia. Every summer it holds a show that brings together the country's potters.