Village
Outes is a concello of around 6,000 inhabitants situated in the south-west of the province of La Coruña, in the region of Noya, which occupies more than half of the northern shore of the ria de Muros e Noia, formed by the mouth of the river Tambre. Its territory, of 99.74 km², gathers 153 places in ten parishes, with A Serra de Outes as its seat, and its relief rises from the coast up to the plateau of the river Jallas, where the Tremuzo exceeds 500 metres. Its economy combines shellfish gathering, livestock farming and sawmills, and its land produced the poet Francisco Añón, forerunner of the Rexurdimento, as well as the distinctive sancosmeiro hat.
Monument
A medieval manorial tower on a rectangular plan, some fifteen metres by seven and a half, which keeps a Gothic entrance arch; it forms part of the string of fortifications that controlled the way through to the ría of Muros e Noia.
Monument
A parish church built between 1788 and 1794 which keeps in one chapel the body attributed to San Campio, a Roman soldier martyred in the year 306; its pilgrimage festival on 29 September draws the devout from all over the comarca.
Monument
Rock carvings at the place of Freixo made up of concentric circles with a radial groove, the largest of them close to a metre across; they belong to the classic repertoire of Galician Atlantic rock art.
Monument
A group of eight adjoining slabs in the rocky area of Laxe das Brañas bearing some 150 carvings, mostly crosses, spread over barely 25 square metres and attributed to the late antique or early medieval period.
Monument
A megalithic mound some thirty metres across, the largest of the more than thirty prehistoric burials recorded in the municipality between the places of Xende, Banzas and Valadares.
Nature
Highest point of the municipality and a natural viewpoint over the ría de Muros e Noia; a signposted fourteen-kilometre route sets off from Broña beach and climbs to its summit crossing the communal mount of Albán. At 524 metres of altitude, the mount lies in the central area of the ría, already within the municipality of Outes, and from its summit the final stretch of the Tambre river and the mouth of the Tins river in the ensenada do Engano can be seen. At the top it has a recreation area and a wind farm.
Nature
A semi-urban beach of some 475 metres of white sand in the parish of San Cosme de Outeiro, sheltered from the northerly winds by the Tremuzo massif and washed by the calm water at the head of the ría.
Curiosity
A Roman votive altar found at the place of Banzas and kept today at the Museo do Pobo Galego in Santiago; together with the Cando stele it proves that these lands were Romanised despite their remote appearance.
Curiosity
Wide-brimmed straw farming hat originating in the parish of Santo Ourente de Entíns, which became a peasant work garment across much of Galicia —not only in the comarca of Noia, but also in A Barcala, O Sar, Santiago or A Barbanza— and an identity symbol of the municipality of Outes. It is made with wheat or rye straw gathered in July and August, dampened to give it flexibility and plaited with three or more strands, usually four or six. It gives its name to the sancosmeiro de ouro, the most prized award given by the council to people or organisations noted for their work in favour of the economic, social and cultural development of the municipality: a gold replica of the hat, which is also placed on the head of whoever receives it.
Activity
A museum installed in an old abandoned shipyard which uses tools and audiovisuals to explain the trade of wooden boatbuilding, in a municipality that once had close to forty slipways for building wooden vessels.
Activity
Every 29 September people from all over the comarca come to this pilgrimage festival seeking the saint's protection against the so-called mal cativo, nervous ailments and the ills attributed to possession.
Curiosity
A celebration held on the night of April 30, linked to the cycle of spring and to fire, in which the youngest farmhands of Outes would walk the fields by night with straw torches, the pampallíns that give the festival its name, reciting popular sayings to invoke the fertility of the harvest and celebrate the arrival of the new season. In the distance, the torches of the other parishes could be seen dancing around the fields. It is one of the oldest traditions in the municipality, today preserved only in part: little remains of the original celebration, which has become a youth gathering sponsored by the town hall.
Historical milestone
In the hamlet of Boel, in the parish of San Pedro de Outes (Outes, A Coruña), Francisco Añón Paz was born on October 9, 1812, a Galician poet and journalist, precursor of the Rexurdimento and a collaborator of the first provincialist generation. The son of a well-off farming family, he studied Philosophy and Theology in Santiago de Compostela and graduated in Law in 1845. In 1846 he moved to Lisbon, where he lived until 1850, and afterward traveled through France, Italy and southern Spain in the service of an English nobleman; he later lived in Seville and in Madrid, the city where in 1875 he founded the association La Galicia Literaria, of which he was president, and where he died in 1878, sunk in poverty. The 1966 Día das Letras Galegas (Day of Galician Letters) was dedicated to him.
Activity
On the quay of O Freixo the boatbuilding trade is kept up, the craft of building dornas and estuary vessels in wood; the yards coexist with the mussel rafts and with the shellfishing of the Tambre estuary.
Nature
The Tambre river opens here into an estuary of marshes and tidal flats, declared a special conservation area, which protects its final stretch and its mouth at the ría de Muros e Noia, next to Meán island. In this intertidal zone of mud and sand, covered with reeds and Zostera noltii, numerous migratory birds gather during the winter, while around the head of the estuary grow forests of alders, ashes and oaks, and dunes are preserved, both mobile and already fixed by vegetation. Here water birds nest and feed, and shellfish gathering on foot is carried out in the area known as the Marea da Serra.
Food and drink
The sands of the Tambre estuary yield razor clams and jackknife clams extracted by diving or on foot at spring tides; they are cooked on the griddle with lemon, barely a few seconds so that they do not toughen.
Nature
Waterfalls of the río Tines set in an oak wood, beside the chapel and the carballeira of San Paio; a circular route of a little more than twenty-three kilometres links them with the glyptographs of A Carballa and the valley of Carleo.
Activity
A coastal path of some sixteen and a half kilometres, of low difficulty, that follows the shore of the ría of Muros e Noia tracing the riverside shipyards and the trade of boat carpenter in the concello.