Village
Cerceda is a concello of around 5,100 inhabitants in the A Coruña region of Órdenes, with its seat at O Campo da Feira; its economy has revolved around the Meirama thermal power plant, whose silhouette appears on the municipal coat of arms, and the Sogama waste treatment plant. It preserves the church of Santo André de Meirama, built in the 12th century on a Galician castro where a gold torc was found, and remodelled in 1720. Also preserved are the pazo de Boedo, declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 1994, and the pazo das Lavandeiras, from the 18th century and in Baroque style. In summer the Aquapark water park opens. The main festivals are held in mid-June, in honour of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
Monument
Parish church raised in the twelfth century and deeply remodelled in 1720; it is the oldest construction preserved in the concello and its most valuable religious piece, in a landscape that the twentieth century transformed completely with lignite mining and the thermal power station.
Monument
Mansion declared a bien de interés cultural in 1994, recognisable by its pair of chimneys and by the coats of arms displayed on the façade; it is the best-protected example of the manorial architecture that Cerceda preserves.
Monument
Baroque construction of the 18th century restored in recent years, with the ensemble of house, enclosing wall and outbuildings characteristic of the pazos that the rural gentry built in this area of the comarca of Ordes.
Nature
Lake Encrobas, or Lake Meirama, is a reservoir in the Encrobas valley, in the municipality of Cerceda, formed from the pit of an open-cast lignite mine that supplied the Meirama thermal power plant. The mine, opened in 1980 after expropriating the lands of hundreds of farmers, extracted 94 million tonnes and left a pit 300 metres deep before ceasing operations in 2007; already in 1985 the operating company, Unión Fenosa, had begun environmental restoration in parallel. The lake measures 2.2 kilometres in length and 205 metres at its maximum depth, with 148 cubic hectometres of water and 171 hectares of surface area; around it some 800,000 trees were planted—oaks, chestnuts, alders and willows—which today are home to wild boar, birds of prey, wolves and trout.
Nature
Reservoir listed among the concello's natural resources, a sheet of water surrounded by woodland and forestry plantations that has become a place for fishing and walking in a municipality heavily marked by industry.
Curiosity
The castro that gives the concello its name yielded a gold torc, an uncommon find that places this settlement among those of highest rank in the area; Cerceda also preserves the castro of Coto de Guichar, in As Encrobas.
Activity
The concello maintains three approved routes, the PR-G 129, 130 and 131, which link the rural settlements with the shores of the Lago das Encrobas and with the mills and waterfalls of the municipality's interior.
Monument
A twelfth-century Romanesque church altered in the eighteenth that was taken apart stone by stone and rebuilt at Pontoxo between 1996 and 1997, when the advance of the lignite mine swallowed its original site.
Activity
Three itineraries waymarked and approved as short routes link the parishes of the concello, the mills of its brooks and the viewpoints over the lake that arose in the old mining pit.
Historical milestone
The conflict of las Encrobas was an agrarian and social revolt that broke out in this parish of the concello of Cerceda in the last years of the Franco regime, when the company Unión Fenosa planned to exploit a lignite deposit beneath the land and the Francoist Council of Ministers authorised its compulsory expropriation in the absence of an agreement with the owners. The actions organised by the residents, led by the parish priest Moncho Valcarce, gained wide media attention and broad popular support, and reached their peak in the clashes with the Civil Guard in 1977. The land was occupied in March of that year to build the Meirama mine and thermal power plant, closed in 2007 and 2020 respectively, and most of the parish ended up abandoning their homes.
Nature
Lake Meirama, also called Lake Encrobas, occupies the hollow more than 300 metres deep left by the lignite mine that supplied the neighbouring thermal power plant, worked from 1980 until 94 million tonnes had been extracted, and closed in 2007. As early as 1985, alongside the extraction, the company had begun an environmental rehabilitation project that gradually turned the spoil heaps into today's forest. The sheet of water, born from the filling of the pit that began in 2008, measures 2.2 kilometres long by one wide and reaches a maximum depth of 205 metres, with 171 hectares of surface area; the rehabilitated areas total 730 hectares. It is today one of the largest artificial lakes in Galicia, with banks of native vegetation and colonised by waterfowl.