Village
As Pontes de García Rodríguez is a concello in the comarca of the Eume, in the province of A Coruña, the largest in the province and home to one of the biggest energy operations in Spain, which made it a major Galician industrial hub. Its open-pit lignite mine, closed in 2007, flooded to form an artificial lake in 2012, the largest in Spain excluding reservoirs, which today offers a beach and water sports and hosts its own ecosystem; beside it still stands the thermal power plant, with the tallest chimney in Spain, at 356 metres. A large part of the protected mountain area of the Fragas del Eume, an Atlantic forest bordering the Eume reservoir, lies within its boundaries. It has about 9,800 inhabitants.
Nature
Former open-cast lignite mine turned into a lake: 865 hectares of water surface, 206 metres of maximum depth and 547 cubic hectometres. The filling, fed mainly by the Eume, lasted from January 2008 to May 2012. The mine, which supplied the As Pontes thermal power station, was reclaimed by Endesa to form an artificial lake five kilometres long, Galicia's second-largest water reserve after the Belesar reservoir. Besides the Eume and rainfall, it receives water from the Maciñeira and da Ponte de Pedra rivers, among other streams, and discharges its flow back into the Eume downstream of the town of As Pontes.
Nature
The highest point of the municipality at 756 metres, on the eastern edge of the comarca; from its summit the artificial lake, the Eume valley and the ranges separating A Coruña from the province of Lugo are all taken in.
Curiosity
At 356 metres tall, 36 metres in diameter at the base and 18 at the top, it is the tallest structure in Spain; it appears in the Guinness Book of Records as the chimney with the largest volume in the world and is the second tallest in Europe. It was built in 1974 for the lignite-fired power station, owned by Endesa, constructed between 1972 and 1976, which grouped four 350 MW generating units into a single 1,400 MW block; designed to burn local lignite, it was adapted between 1993 and 1996 to a 50% blend with imported coal. Its coal stockyard, covering 10 hectares, equivalent to twelve football pitches, had a storage capacity of 250,000 tonnes. The power station stopped generating on 4 October 2023, after almost half a century in operation.
Curiosity
The mine pit that fed the power station came to cover 811 hectares and to descend 200 metres below the surface; its working ended on 31 December 2007 and restoration work had already begun in 1985.
Monument
An ashlar bridge built in 1860 over the Eume and named after the queen; it belongs to the group of crossings that gave the town its name, alongside others of medieval origin scattered across the municipality.
Monument
An arched bridge of the 14th and 15th centuries preserved within the municipal district, one of the medieval crossings that explain the place name As Pontes and that served the roads between the Terra Chá and the Ferrol coast.
Monument
The parish church of Vilavella, on the edge of the town, a survivor of a rural landscape transformed by mining: lignite extraction went as far as making whole parishes of the As Pontes valley disappear.
Activity
A food fair held on Carnival Sunday since 1981 around the grelo, the turnip top grown in the municipality, which draws thousands of diners and has turned a winter vegetable into the emblem of this mining town.
Activity
A celebration on 20 August marking the opening in 2012 of the lake born from the mine; the date marks the moment when an industrial pit 200 metres deep became a place to swim and stroll.
Monument
Known as the ponte vella, it is the most notable of those ordered to be raised over the Eume in the time of the lordship of García Rodríguez de Valcarce, whose bridges gave the villa its name.
Historical milestone
García Rodríguez de Valcarce, a 15th-century Galician nobleman, fought alongside Enrique de Trastámara at the battle of Nájera, in 1367, against Pedro I of Castile. The defeat was crushing and he himself was taken prisoner, having to hand over the coutos of Valón and Brión, in the Terra de Trasancos, to pay his ransom. In recognition of his loyalty and the services rendered, Henry II, by then king (1369-1379), granted him the lordship of the vila das Pontes, today As Pontes de García Rodríguez, whose name was forever bound to his own. He went on to hold, in Trasancos, the lordships of Santa Uxía de Mandiá, from 1401, and the couto and castelo of Moeche, from where he governed his possessions in Trasancos, Lamas and Cerdido.
Historical milestone
In that year appears the first text attesting the existence of the council of As Pontes, in a territory where more than a hundred mámoas, Bell Beaker pottery and Early Christian sarcophagi had already been catalogued.
Historical milestone
In the late 18th century José Cornide reported to the Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Santiago the existence of lignite deposits in As Pontes, the first step towards an operation that would transform the landscape two centuries later.
Curiosity
In the nineteen-fifties and sixties the national company that opened the mine and the first thermal power station built this quarter of dwellings to house the workers who came from all over Galicia, an industrial settlement of regular layout.
Nature
On the shore of the mining lake a freshwater beach was laid out with sand, a supervised swimming area and walkways, an unusual recreational use for what had been the largest mining pit in Galicia. The lake das Pontes, with a surface area of 865 hectares, arose from the recovery and regeneration works on the open-cast mine that supplied lignite to the As Pontes thermal power plant, and it filled with waters from the river Eume and rainfall until completion in April 2012; it is five kilometres long and up to 206 metres deep at its maximum, making it Galicia's second-largest water reserve, behind only the Belesar reservoir. It also receives the waters of the rivers Maciñeira and da Ponte de Pedra, and discharges its flow into the Eume downstream of the town.
Food and drink
In winter the villa devotes a fair to the grelo, the tender turnip leaf grown in its bottom fields and covered by the protected geographical indication Grelos de Galicia; it is served with lacón, potatoes and chorizo.
Monument
Its confraternity was founded in 1736 and since 1741 the festivities of the Carmen have been held every 16 July in the centre of the town; the Virgin was proclaimed patron of the municipality in 1860 and the chapel presides over the square that bears her name.