Village
Monfero is a concello in the province of A Coruña, in the comarca of the Eume, largely within the natural park das Fragas do Eume, with about 1,800 inhabitants across seven parishes. Its relief is dominated by the serra da Loba, with Monte da Pendella, at 712 metres, while the river Eume marks its northern boundary before receiving the tributaries Frai Bermuz and San Bartolomeu. There has been a human presence since prehistory, with mámoas such as that of Pena do Moncouso, and in the Middle Ages the territory fell under the jurisdiction of a Cistercian monastery documented since 1135. The monastery of Santa María de Monfero, with origins in the 10th century and a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), preserves several single-arch bridges from the 15th century. A large part of the Fragas do Eume, a natural park since 1997, lies within Monfero.
Monument
The monastery of Santa María de Monfero stands in a small valley where the Lambruxo river rises, within the Fragas do Eume natural park, some 21 kilometres from Pontedeume. Founded by the nobles Alfonso Bermúdez and his nephew Pedro Osorio, it was first entrusted to the Benedictines until it passed to the Cistercian Order in 1147; a Cistercian monastery ever since, it was rebuilt in 1135 under Alfonso VII on an earlier settlement. It reached its height in the 16th and 17th centuries, when its rooms were renovated and its church moved from Renaissance to Baroque style. Its façade, completed around 1645 and overseen from 1620 by Simón de Monasterio, alternates granite and slate ashlar in a checkerboard pattern.
Monument
Several single-arched 15th-century bridges still cross the Frai Bermuz, Lambre and Lambruxo rivers in this mountain municipality, evidence of the network of roads that linked the monastery with its granges and with the coast.
Monument
A chapel in the parish of San Fiz de Monfero that preserves polychrome wooden carvings; together with the neighbouring hermitage of Lagares it makes up the small devotional heritage scattered over the slopes of the Serra da Loba.
Curiosity
The abbey church holds the tombs of three lords of the lineage: Nuno Freire de Andrade, o Mao, whose castle the irmandiños pulled down, Fernán Pérez de Andrade, o Mozo, and Diego de Andrade, gathered in their family pantheon.
Nature
A ridge of the Galician watershed range that closes off the concello of Monfero to the south, on the border between the provinces of Lugo and A Coruña, running from the As Pontes de García Rodríguez depression to the sources of the Mandeo and Labrada rivers, which separate it from the Montouto ridge; streams that feed the Eume flow down its slopes, marking off the Atlantic basins of the north of the province. Made up of two-mica granite, ollo de sapo gneiss and migmatitic schists, it stretches for about 20 kilometres and reaches its highest point at Pena Verde, 709 metres above sea level.
Nature
Watercourse that drains the western part of Monfero together with its tributary the Lambruxo; it runs hemmed in between riverside woods and under medieval arched bridges before leaving the concello on its way to the ría de Betanzos. It rises at 600 metres above sea level on Mount Pena da Uz, within Monfero itself, and after crossing the municipalities of Villarmayor, Irijoa, Miño and Paderne it flows, after a 15-kilometre course, into the sea at the place of Ponte do Porco, in Miño, on the right bank of the ría de Betanzos. It is a river with an oceanic rainfall regime, and along its course, in Vilarmaior, lies the Guimil reservoir, owned by Unión Fenosa. Its name, already documented in 1092 as flumen Lambre, has been linked to the pre-Roman root that also gave rise to the river Tambre.
Monument
A single-arched 15th-century bridge over the river Frai Bermuz, one of the three of that period that the concello preserves, along with that of San Paio, over the Lambre, and the one that spans the river Lambruxo.
Curiosity
Besides the parish churches, the municipality preserves small rural hermitages such as that of the Ascensión in Boicornello, those of Santo André da Ribeira and Lagares, or that of San Bartolomeu in A Ermida.
Nature
A sierra that closes the concello to the east, on the Galician backbone, and on whose heights prehistoric mámoas are preserved; from its slopes come down the streams that feed the Eume and the Lambre.
Historical milestone
The jurisdictional domain of the Cistercian Monasterio de Monfero over this territory was consolidated after the monastery's rebuilding in 1135 at the initiative of Alfonso VII, and it lasted until the disentailment.
Historical milestone
After the Norman raids that ruined the old monastery beside the chapel of San Marcos, Alfonso VII ordered it raised again in 1135 with the support of the nobles Afonso Bermúdez and Pedro Osorio; it was settled by Benedictines who came from Valverde do Bierzo.
Historical milestone
The settlers of the estate refused to go on paying rents to the monastery and ended by killing the abbot; behind the episode lay the seigneurial weight of the house, which in 1506 would be annexed to the Congregation of Castile.
Nature
An oak wood turned into a recreation area beside the puente do Dez, one of the old stone crossings of the concello; the carballos shade the tables on the riverbank, in one of the coolest corners of the interior.