Village
Carnota is a coastal concello in the province of A Coruña, in the comarca of Muros, situated in the transition between the Rías Altas and the Rías Baixas; its name may come from the pre-Celtic word carn, stone. Burial mounds and castros attest to ancient settlement, and in the Middle Ages it belonged to the counts of Trastámara and of Lemos; its fortresses disappeared with the Great Irmandiña War of 1467, and the present-day settlement was born in the 17th century. In 1966 it received the title of Muy Humanitario for the rescue of the crew of the ship Ariete during a storm. Its sands, almost seven kilometres long at the foot of Mount Pindo, are among the longest in Galicia, and its 18th-century hórreo, almost 35 metres long, rivals that of Lira for the title of the largest. It has about 3,800 inhabitants.
Monument
The hórreo of Carnota stands next to the baroque church of Santa Comba de Carnota, in the parish of the same name, and beside the rectory dovecote, in the municipality of Carnota. It was built in 1768 with eleven pairs of legs, and in 1783 eleven more were added, reaching 34.76 metres by 1.9 metres wide; it belongs to the Noia type of hórreo, built of granite, with a rectangular plan, a closed chamber and horizontal rows with ventilation slits, three doors on one of its sides and a crowning of baroque pinnacles and a cross atop a sphere. It was built to store the maize of the whole parish, and disputes with the hórreo of Lira the title of longest in Galicia. Protected since 1973 by the decree on hórreos and cabazos, it is a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
Monument
A communal granary situated next to the church of Santa María de Lira, in the municipality of Carnota, to which it was linked. It was built between 1779 and 1814, first with eleven pairs of legs which were later extended to twenty-two, and belongs to the so-called Noia type of hórreo, built of granite on a small stone platform that compensates for the unevenness of the ground; it measures 36.53 metres long by 1.60 metres wide. It disputes with the one at Carnota, in the same municipality, the title of longest hórreo in Galicia, and is surpassed only by the one at Araño, in Rianxo, at 36.80 metres. It is protected by Decree 449/1973 on the protection of hórreos and cabazos.
Monument
The church of Santa Comba de Carnota was built in 1755 to replace an earlier, smaller Romanesque temple, and together with the parish's famous communal hórreo, the rectory and a circular dovecote, it forms a monumental ensemble unique in the area. With a Latin-cross plan and a classicist baroque air, with two side aisles, its high altar is presided over by a retable by the sculptor José Ferreiro, and in the 19th century the tall tower that crowns it today, attributed to Carlos Aboy, was added.
Monument
The church of San Mamede de Carnota was built in 1755 to a design by the architect Miguel Ferro Caaveiro, in Neoclassical style with a Latin-cross plan. The temple, erected around the mid-18th century, holds several retables by the Compostela masters Francisco Nogueira and Pablo de Rosende, although the standout is above all the high retable, of Neoclassical lines, commissioned in 1774 from the Noia sculptors José Ferreiro and José Gambino, two of the greatest names in Galician religious imagery. Following popular custom, the entrance is surrounded by gravestones facing the altar.
Monument
The lighthouse of Punta Insua, also known as the Lariño lighthouse, stands on the point of Insua, in the parish of Lariño, in the concello of Carnota, and is managed by the port authority of Vilagarcía de Arousa. It was built to link the lighthouses of Corrubedo and Fisterra, given the difficulty of navigation along that stretch of coast: the need for the works was determined in 1894, although it was not completed until 1913 and its opening was delayed until 1921, the year it entered service; it was electrified in 1947. It thus marks the entrance to the Fisterra arc and the ría of Corcubión, and today houses accommodation.
Nature
An Iron Age fortified settlement situated on an outeiro about 120 metres high near Carnota beach, linked to the exploitation of the land and the sea. Its croa, surrounded by a ditch and a second wall, with a third acting as a parapet at the entrance, measures about 110 metres from north to south by 60 metres from east to west; two defensive towers flank the entrance. Inside, dwellings and auxiliary buildings of circular and elongated plan have been documented, the latter alongside the wall. The castro was excavated in 2006 and 2007 during work camps run by the Xunta de Galicia, and cleaned and studied again in 2013 as part of a public archaeology project.
Monument
Rock fortress of terraced constructions looking out over the final stretch of the river Xallas, destroyed like the rest of those in the concello, the Galician municipality, during the Irmandiño revolt of 1467; it preserves an engraved inscription of excommunication that some authors take back to the twelfth century, a testimony to the struggle between the ecclesiastical lordship and the local people.
Nature
A granite massif 627 metres high that falls almost directly into the sea, in the municipality of Carnota, known as the Celtic Olympus for the almost human silhouettes that erosion has carved into its boulders, which inspired numerous legends of deities, sculptures and mythical giants, some linked to the Jallas river and the Ézaro waterfall. Together with Carnota beach it forms the Carnota-Monte Pindo natural area, included in the Natura 2000 Network. It holds archaeological remains such as petroglyphs and bronze tools; in the 10th century Bishop Sisnando of Iria Flavia ordered the castle of San Xurxo to be built within its bounds to protect the area from medieval pirates, destroyed in 1467 during the Irmandiño Revolt. A fire that started on 11 September 2013 destroyed much of its vegetation.
Nature
The summit of Monte Pindo, 627 metres above sea level, from which a single sweep of the eye takes in Cape Fisterra, the ría of Corcubión and the seven kilometres of sand of Carnota beach stretching away to the south.
Nature
At over seven kilometres, Carnota beach is considered the largest in Galicia; at low tide the sand stretches more than 500 metres wide in some stretches. Backed by a complete system of mobile, semi-fixed and fixed dunes and separated from the hill by two areas of brackish-water marshland, its inland lagoon shelters a wide variety of migratory birds, which makes it especially vulnerable to ecological damage: it was one of the beaches affected by the Prestige oil spill. Together with Monte Pindo it forms the Carnota-Monte Pindo natural area, a Natura 2000 Network special area of conservation of 4,629 hectares that extends between the rías of Corcubión and of Muros and Noya. The German magazine Traum Strände included it among the hundred best beaches in the world.
Nature
Brackish wetland behind the dune ridge of the beach of Carnota, divided into two sectors — Caldebarcos to the north and A Lagoa to the south — separated by the punta Larada, which close the beach at both ends; it is a resting area for migratory waders, one of the best-preserved marsh complexes of the Costa da Morte, and it is protected by the Natura 2000 Network.
Nature
The mouth of the River Valdebois right in the middle of Carnota beach, where the fresh water traces meanders across the sand; from there you reach the sands of A Berberecheira and As Cangrexeiras and the marshes.
Nature
A beach of some two kilometres west of the Punta de Insua, in the parish of San Martiño de Lariño, open to the Atlantic and closed off at the back by the granite bulk of the municipality's interior.
Nature
The Carnota-Monte Pindo natural area is a Special Area of Conservation of 4,674 hectares divided between the concellos of Carnota, Cee, Corcubión, Dumbría and Mazaricos. It comprises the beaches of Carnota and Caldebarcos, between which a system of marsh and lagoon forms, the lagoa de Caldebarcos, backed by a field of mobile and semi-mobile dunes. At the back of the shoreline rise the granite crags of the Monte Pindo massif. The marshes, covered with reed beds, are a breeding ground for birds such as the Kentish Plover, while the area's active raised bogs are especially notable. Also included are the fervenza do Ézaro waterfall and the islands of Lobeira Grande and Lobeira Chica, together with the waters surrounding them.
Monument
The castelo de San Xurxo, an episcopal fortress built on the granite massif of Monte Pindo, in Carnota, was founded or refounded in the 10th century by Bishop Sisnando II as part of the defence of the Galician coast against Norsemen and Arabs, also protecting access to Santiago de Compostela. Considered one of the oldest stone castles in Galicia and one of the few never conquered, it stood on the steep Pico Pedrullo, at 300 metres, with several watchtowers and a keep that dominated the coast between the capes of Touriñán and Corrubedo. Around it the Carnota revolt against ecclesiastical lordship broke out; in the early 14th century its tenant asked the Church for permission to demolish it, and its ruins, never excavated, were reduced to rubble.
Monument
The municipality's second 10th-century episcopal fortress, now in ruins; nothing is left standing of the chapel that went with it, and local tradition attributes its destruction to the passage of French troops.
Nature
Castro, a fortified hill settlement, set in the hamlet of Lira and much altered by later farming and building use, to the point that its structures can be made out more in the present field pattern than on the ground itself; its name lives on today in the marine reserve that extends just opposite this coast.
Curiosity
Quercus lusitanica, a dwarf oak that rises barely a hand's breadth above the ground, is known in Galicia only around Monte Pindo, which made the massif a key argument for its protection.
Curiosity
Sanctuary that crowned the Bico do Santo, at the place of Pedrafigueira, of which some versions say that only the memory remains along with a cross raised later on the summit, while others describe the small chapel as still standing, today housing a civil cross, an unusual use among the chapels of the Costa da Morte; the promontory remains a visual reference point for the whole valley.
Activity
A celebration on 1 January that opens the municipality's festive year and brings people together around the square that bears the saint's name, one of the most deeply rooted dates in the Carnota calendar.
Activity
A patronal festival in early August in the parish of San Mamede de Carnota, with a sung mass, procession and open-air dance around the 18th-century church that holds the retable by Ferreiro and Gambino. The festivities are held in the square of the hamlet of O Viso, which is also home to the Carnota Municipal Music School and a nursery school.
Activity
A route signposted by the municipality that runs along the beach and the dunes and marshes behind it, passing A Boca do Río and coming close to the hides from which the wetland birds are watched.
Activity
It is held on 1 January and is one of the events with the most comarcal prestige in the calendar of Carnota, a singular case in a land where the pilgrimage festivals are almost always concentrated in the summer months.
Nature
The castro de Mallou sits on an outeiro about 120 metres high, near the beach of Carnota, on a site linked to the exploitation of the sea and the farmland that helps to understand the visual control that these fortified Iron Age settlements exercised over the coast and the cultivated land. It has a rectangular plan, about 110 by 60 metres, with a single enclosure surrounded by a ditch and a second wall, and a third acting as a parapet at the entrance, flanked by two defensive towers. Inside, circular dwellings of about 15 square metres have been documented, along with other elongated ones next to the wall. The castro was excavated in 2006 and 2007 in work camps run by the Xunta de Galicia, and excavated again in 2013 in a public archaeology intervention.
Activity
Monte Pindo is a granite massif 627 metres high in Carnota, whose granite boulders, shaped by erosion, inspired legends of deities, monsters and giants; petroglyphs, bronze tools and the remains of a supposed ancient hermitage have been found there. In the 10th century Bishop Sisnando ordered the castle of San Xurxo to be built on its slopes, a defence against medieval pirates, later inhabited by noble Galician families until its destruction in the irmandiño revolts of 1467; of two other castles, Canedo and Penafiel, barely any documentary trace remains, save for a Latin inscription about the excommunication of 1130 issued by Archbishop Xelmírez against the Count of Traba. The massif forms part, together with the beaches of Carnota, of the Carnota-Monte Pindo special conservation area.
Activity
One of the itineraries waymarked by the concello sets out from the parish of O Pindo and runs along the coastal strip to the final stretch of the river Xallas, with the granite massif of O Pindo always in sight.
Historical milestone
The second brotherhood pulled down, between 1467 and 1469, the four fortresses of the present-day concello: Penafiel, Pindo Central, San Xurxo and Canedo. None was ever raised again and today only stretches of wall and the remains of their chapels survive.
Historical milestone
A Xunta decree created in 2007, off the coast of Lira, the first marine reserve of fishing interest in Galicia. It was promoted by the fishermen's guild itself and is co-managed with it, an uncommon case in Europe.
Food and drink
In the port of Portocubelo, in Lira, the products taken from the marine reserve are tasted during the summer, with the goose barnacle as the protagonist accompanied by wines from the Galician denominations of origin.
Food and drink
The festivities of the Virgen del Carmen in Caldebarcos and Panchés include a great popular sardine grill, the oldest way of celebrating on the Galician coast the abundance of sardine during the summer months.
Curiosity
A granite massif 627 metres high that plunges sheer into the sea, popular tradition dubbed it the Celtic Olympus, populating it with witches, treasures and named crags sculpted by erosion. Together with Carnota beach, it forms the Carnota-Monte Pindo natural area, included in the Natura 2000 network, and is shared among the municipalities of Carnota, Mazaricos, Cee and Dumbría. It holds petroglyphs and archaeological remains, and in the 10th century Bishop Sisnando had the San Xurxo castle built on its edges as a defence against pirates, destroyed in 1467 during the Irmandiña revolt. A Latin inscription preserved on an isolated stone also recalls the excommunication that Archbishop Diego Gelmírez of Compostela launched in 1130 against the Count of Traba.