Village
A Capela is a concello in the comarca of the Eume, in the province of A Coruña, crossed by the valleys of the rivers Eume and Belelle, at an average altitude of 450 metres, with about 1,170 inhabitants. Its entire territory belonged to the monastery of Caaveiro throughout the Middle Ages and the Ancien Régime, and the present-day concello was established in 1835 with nine parishes, a number that rose to sixteen before losing several in the 1982 split that gave rise to the neighbouring municipality of As Pontes. The Eume valley is home to the Fragas do Eume, within the natural park of the same name, and preserves the monastery of San Xoán de Caaveiro, documented since the year 934, abandoned around 1800 and now undergoing restoration. Other buildings of interest include the parish church of Santiago da Capela, of Romanesque origin, and the chapel of Nosa Señora das Neves, from the 13th century.
Monument
The mosteiro de San Xoán de Caaveiro is a medieval monastery in the fragas do Eume, on the bank of the Eume river, in the parish of A Capela. It was established in the year 934 to house the numerous anchorites who lived scattered across the area; donations from Rosendo de Celanova soon expanded its holdings and gave it jurisdiction over towns and parishes. Its church attained the rank of Royal Collegiate Church, which it kept until the late 18th century; it belonged first to the Order of Saint Benedict and, from the 12th century, to the regular canons of Saint Augustine. With the disentailment its possessions were sold off and it lay abandoned from 1800. In the 19th century Pío García Espinosa restored it, tearing down the old priory church in 1896, and it was declared a Historic-Artistic Monument in 1975.
Monument
Small 13th-century Romanesque hermitage preserved in the concello of A Capela, one of the few surviving examples of minor medieval architecture in the upper Eume valley. It has a rectangular, single-nave plan, to which a square-plan tower was added in the 19th century, with a four-arched belfry topped by a hemispherical dome.
Monument
Parish church of Romanesque origin which gives the concello its name, located at the place of Pazo. It is known for its bell tower, reached from outside by a stone staircase that turns into a spiral staircase once inside the tower, leading up to the gallery and the belfry itself; an uncommon feature in the rural churches of the Eume comarca.
Nature
The macizo do Forgoselo is a mountain range of mainly granite rock that runs west to east through the concellos of Neda, San Sadurniño, A Capela and As Pontes, over more than 1,400 hectares north of the Fragas do Eume. Its vegetation is dominated by heather (queirugas) and pine (piñeiro), while wolves, roe deer, wild boar and numerous amphibian species live in the ecologically valuable veigas and brañas (wet meadows). Its highest points are Racamonde, at 542 metres, and Pena do Escoitadoiro, at 518. The human relationship with the range goes back to prehistory, of which megalithic remains survive; today horses graze there freely and are the stars of the rapa das bestas, held in the curros (corrals) of the area.
Nature
The embalse do Eume is the larger of the river's two reservoirs, covering 450 hectares across the concellos of A Capela, As Pontes and Monfero, with a volume of 123 cubic hectometres. Its dam, designed by engineer Luciano Yordi de Carricarte and built between 1955 and 1960 making use of the narrowness of the Eume canyon, is a double-curvature arch dam 101 metres high with a concrete volume of 225,000 cubic metres. It feeds a 54,400-kilowatt hydroelectric power station, the most powerful in the province of A Coruña. The dam's construction stopped salmon from swimming upriver to their spawning grounds and led to their disappearance, despite restocking with 300,000 Scottish eggs between 1992 and 1996; trout, eels and sea trout (reos), however, have recovered their former habitats.
Nature
The Mazoca stream drops between five and seven metres before joining the Eume downstream of Caaveiro; its valley, with restored mills, forms the ethnographic park that serves as the north-western gateway to the Fragas do Eume.
Curiosity
One of the first power stations in Galicia, built in the early 20th century in the middle of the Eume canyon and abandoned today; its walls and its channel are still there, swallowed by the forest, halfway between Caaveiro and the reservoir.
Activity
A walking route that follows the Eume upstream from the monastery of Caaveiro to the old Ventureira power station, keeping to the floor of the canyon among oaks, laurels and relict ferns inside the natural park.
Historical milestone
The Xunta decreed the transfer of seven parishes of the concello, among them Espiñaredo, Ribadeume and San Pedro de Eume, to the municipality of As Pontes, halving a territory that in 1842 came to have sixteen parishes.
Nature
A natural park declared on 30 July 1997, protecting 9,126 hectares along the river, considered the best-preserved coastal Atlantic forest in Europe, with relict ferns and the Iberian wolf. It extends over the municipalities of Cabañas, A Capela, Monfero, Puentedeume and As Pontes de García Rodríguez, home in total to about five hundred people. Among its fauna, amphibians and reptiles such as the golden-striped salamander stand out, along with various birds of prey. On 31 March 2012 a deliberately set fire, spread by the wind and by nearby pine and eucalyptus plantations, burned part of the river canyon at 300 metres altitude before being extinguished on 3 April.
Activity
A path that climbs the bank of the Eume from the park car park to the monastery, among laurels, oaks and chestnuts; access is regulated in summer so as not to saturate the narrow valley.
Monument
It preserves the thirteenth-century Romanesque apse, witness to the old dependence on the monastery of Caaveiro, beneath a façade rebuilt in the nineteenth century; it gives its name to one of the parishes the monastery governed for centuries.
Curiosity
A water-powered forge that used the force of the water to move the hammer with which the iron was beaten; it is one of the few preserved in Galicia and recalls a trade now vanished from these riverbanks.
Activity
An open-air itinerary along the banks of the Sesín that explains the water mills, the chestnut gathering and the bark stripping, trades that for generations sustained the hamlets on the edge of the Fragas do Eume.
Nature
A waterfall in the surroundings of the former monastery, within the natural park of the Fragas do Eume; it falls among riverside woodland and rock outcrops, and gains flow with the autumn and winter rains.