Logbook · 6 places

What to see and do in Brión

What to see and do in Brión (Santiago, A Coruña): 6 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 2 Nature · 2 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Brión

Shrine of Santa Minia 200 m
Castro Lupario 7 km

Towns near Brión

What to see in Ames 2.4 km · 5 places
What to see in Negreira 6.7 km · 41 places
What to see in Rois 12 km · 15 places
What to see in Santiago de Compostela 12 km · 30 places
What to see in Teo 12 km · 9 places
What to see in A Baña 13 km · 42 places
What to see in Padrón 14 km · 36 places
What to see in Pontecesures 16 km · 10 places

Spain › Galicia › A Coruña › Santiago › Brión

What to see and do in Brión

Brión
Village
Brión is a municipality in the province of A Coruña, with its capital at Pedrouzos and about 8,000 inhabitants, situated halfway between Santiago de Compostela and Noia; it is divided into 106 hamlets and nine parishes. Its name, of Celtic origin, means “castro”, perhaps referring to the Castro de Brión or the Castro Lupario of Bastavales. One of its parishes, today Os Ánxeles, was called Santa María de Pérros until the late 16th century, a name the Compostelan archbishop Francisco Blanco changed because of its unflattering sound. The municipality is known for the 19th-century sanctuary of Santa Minia and for preserving more than sixty cruceiros; in 1979 it was the first Galician town council to draft the minutes of its plenary sessions in Galician.
Shrine of Santa Minia
Monument
A 19th-century sanctuary in Pedrouzos (Brión, A Coruña) built to house the body of Santa Minia, a Roman martyr whose relics were removed in 1781 from the catacombs of Santa Inés in Rome, with the authorisation of Pope Pius VII in 1783. After passing through several hands they reached Luis Tobío, a native of Brión, who carried them by sea to Vigo and by land to the village, where they arrived on 1 August 1848. Worship was authorised that same year, and the church, designed by Manuel de Prado y Vallo and built by the stonemason Manuel Novás between 1851 and 1857 with stone from the Torres de Altamira, received the relics in 1868. Its pilgrimage, on 27 September, draws around 45,000 worshippers who offer wax ex-votos.
Reservoir of Barrié de la Maza
Nature
A reservoir on the lower Tambre set between Brión and Negreira that feeds the Tambre I and II hydroelectric stations; its gorge-like banks form one of the tightest stretches of river anywhere near Compostela.
Castro Lupario
Nature
A Galician castro, also called the castro de Beca, located between the parishes of Bastavales, in Brión, and Ribasar, in Rois. Easily accessible, it preserves visible remains of its walls; this hillfort acropolis may have been the capital of the Amaecos people and achieved considerable importance, to the point of sustaining its own parish for centuries, San Antonino de Castro, suppressed in the early 17th century. Jacobean legend places the residence of Queen Lupa here. It was declared bien de interés cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in December 2009.
Rosalía de Castro publishes Cantares gallegos
Historical milestone
The book that inaugurates the Rexurdimento, published in 1863, includes Campanas de Bastavales, dedicated to the bell tower of this parish of Brión, and made the village one of the most cited places in Galician poetry.
The first municipal plenary session in Galician
Historical milestone
On 28 April 1979 Brión held the first municipal plenary session entirely in Galician of the democratic period, a pioneering gesture that the corporation recalled decades later with the Lois Peña Novo prize of 2016.