Village
Cerdido is a small inland concello in the comarca of Ortegal, in the province of A Coruña, with its capital at A Vila da Igrexa and only three parishes: Casares, Cerdido and La Barquera. Its name, despite the popular etymology linking it to an escaped pig, actually comes from the Latin Quercus, oak, as in Quercetum, «oak grove». In its castro a gold torc appeared in 1840, of workmanship closer to Irish than to Galician pieces. Its economy, once subsistence farming, is today based on eucalyptus forestry and livestock farming; in the 19th century copper mines were opened that never managed to produce. The fair of A Barqueira, devoted each month to a different product, retains its importance in the comarca. It has just over a thousand inhabitants.
Monument
A 16th-century church with late Gothic doorways and a Baroque bell tower; the arms of the marquises and the heraldic animal of the Andrade family appear on its wall. The parish is documented as early as 3 November 1152.
Monument
A neo-Gothic church on a cross plan built in 1920 at A Barqueira, which is the municipality's main settlement even though the seat of the council lies in the neighbouring village of A Vila da Igrexa.
Monument
A cruceiro carved in Moeche stone and dated 1900; its base preserves the inscription recording that it was made at the devotion of Manuel Casal, an example of popular piety funded by locals and emigrants.
Nature
A fortified settlement near A Vila da Igrexa, in the municipality of Cerdido, where in 1840 a gold torc of a type closer to Irish ones than to those usual in Galicia was found, evidence of prehistoric Atlantic trade. In 1932 the municipality's emigrants in America built a school on the hillfort itself, through the Sociedad de Instrucción y Beneficencia Hijos del Ayuntamiento de Cerdido, and in the 1980s the municipality built a recreational area there with a heated swimming pool, a children's playground and picnic areas, which damaged part of the site.
Monument
The municipality preserves a notable body of vernacular architecture in stone and wood: hórreos for the maize and palleiros for the straw, evidence of a farming economy that supported more than 1,600 people at the start of this century.
Nature
A 408-metre summit and the highest point of the municipality, at the junction between the Serra do Forgoselo and the Serra da Faladoira; from it you can see at once the basins draining towards the rías of Ortigueira and Cedeira.
Nature
The Ortigueira-Mera SAC is a natural area protected since 2001 as a special area of conservation within the Natura 2000 Network, covering 3,868 hectares spread across the municipalities of Cariño, Cerdido, Ortigueira, As Pontes de García Rodríguez and As Somozas, alongside the Rías of Ortigueira and Ladrido. It protects the river corridor of the Mera from its headwaters to the Ría de Ortigueira, running in part through the mountains and riverside woods of the municipality of Cerdido, and it is also a special protection area for birds: numerous waterbirds winter there every year, among which the Eurasian curlew stands out.
Activity
A fair of livestock and local produce held since time out of mind at A Barqueira; it survives as a meeting point for the comarca in a municipality that has lost more than a third of its population since 2001.
Historical milestone
In the castro (fortified hilltop settlement) near Vila da Igrexa a gold torc appeared in 1840 of a type almost unique in Galicia, related to the Celtic jewelry of Ireland, which made the site a reference point for castro goldwork.
Curiosity
In the abandoned galleries of these copper mines there formed, once extraction had ceased, speleothems of green, blue and yellow colours considered among the most spectacular in the north-west of the peninsula.
Curiosity
The valley of the river das Mestas preserves, above all near its mouth at Porto do Cabo, a succession of stone flour mills, some still with their millpond shaft and horizontal wheel in good condition.
Curiosity
In the place of O Porto, beside the church of Santo Antón and the old fairground, one of the schools is preserved that were paid for by emigrants returned from America to bring instruction to the rural parishes.