Logbook · 9 places

What to see and do in Teo

What to see and do in Teo (Santiago, A Coruña): 9 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 2 Nature · 2 Activities · 2 Historical milestones · 1 Food and drink

How far each place is from the centre of Teo

Bridge of Pontevea 4.1 km
The Castro Lupario 6 km

Towns near Teo

What to see in Vedra 7.9 km · 7 places
What to see in Santiago de Compostela 10 km · 30 places
What to see in Padrón 10 km · 36 places
What to see in Ames 10 km · 5 places
What to see in Pontecesures 11 km · 10 places
What to see in Boqueixón 12 km · 5 places
What to see in Rois 12 km · 15 places
What to see in Brión 12 km · 6 places

Spain › Galicia › A Coruña › Santiago › Teo

What to see and do in Teo

Teo
Village
Teo is a municipality in the province of A Coruña, in Galicia, stretching between Santiago de Compostela and the valley of the river Ulla, with its capital at A Ramallosa, 11 kilometres from the city of Santiago, and thirteen parishes. The Portuguese Way passes through its land, and in the 10th century it suffered Norman raids that came up the river. Its terrain descends in gentle slopes from heights such as Pena da Agrela, at 411 metres, down to the Ulla floodplain, also crossed by the rivers Santa Lucía, Tella and Tinto. The municipality is well connected by the AP-9 and AP-53 motorways and the N-550 national road, which has favoured its integration into the Santiago metropolitan area. It has about 19,000 inhabitants.
Bridge of Pontevea
Monument
A six-arch bridge over the Ulla linking Teo with A Estrada, built in the 16th century and rebuilt in the 18th; it lost an arch in the 1809 fighting against the French and was declared a Ben de Interese Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 2017. For centuries the site was a meeting point of roads, trade routes and pilgrimage routes, and some historians link it to the course of a Roman road between Bracara Augusta and Lucus Augusti. The arch lost in the War of Independence was rebuilt in 1822, and the town council of A Estrada commissioned further repairs in 1845. It was the only crossing over the Ulla in this area until 1980, when a parallel bridge was built for the present-day road; in 2010 the Dirección Xeral de Patrimonio Cultural restored it and left it as a bridge exclusively for pedestrians.
Portuguese Way
Activity
The Portuguese Way brings together the different routes that, originating in Portugal, climb towards Santiago de Compostela, along the coast from Lisbon and Porto or inland from Évora and Chaves; on its way through Teo it crosses the corredoiras of Rarís and Cacheiras before reaching Compostela. The Association of Friends of the Portuguese Way began waymarking and mapping it in 1993 from Tui, when barely 500 pilgrims a year walked it; since then it has not stopped growing, becoming the second Jacobean route by number of pilgrims, with more than 52,000 in 2016, still far behind the French Way. In 2014 the Diputación de Pontevedra, the Xunta and the twelve municipalities through which the route passes set up a monitoring committee to improve its maintenance and waymarking.
The Portuguese Way as it passes through Teo
Activity
The last stretch of the Jacobean route arriving from Padrón by way of Faramello and A Ramallosa, with a pilgrims' hostel of its own, before climbing towards Compostela along the edge of the Ulla valley.
Death of Bishop Sisnando against the Normans at Rarís
Historical milestone
The Bishop of Iria, Sisnando, fell fighting in 968 against a Norman expedition in the lands of the present-day concello of Teo, in one of the harshest episodes of the Viking raids on the Galician rías.
Galician Veal
Food and drink
Meat covered by a protected geographical indication coming from native breeds raised on the family holdings of the concello, where the meadows of the Ulla valley sustain the cattle herd.
The Pena Agrela and the Teo plain
Nature
The concello is stepped between the platforms of its northern half, crowned by the Pena Agrela at 410 metres — the highest point of the district — and the floor of the Ulla valley, where it descends to a hundred metres. The Pena Agrela thus marks the change between the plains and the river valley, in a hyper-humid strip that receives between 1,700 and 1,800 millimetres of rain a year.
The Castro Lupario
Nature
A castro enclosure of broad walls that tradition identifies with the castle of Queen Lupa, the lady who according to the Jacobean legend first opposed the burial of the Apostle and ended up converting.
The Battle of Cacheiras
Historical milestone
On 23 April 1846, on the slopes of the Alto de Montouto, in Cacheiras (Teo), a battle was fought between the insurgent army led by the officer Miguel Solís and government troops under the command of General José Gutiérrez de la Concha. Solís had risen up on 2 April in Lugo, and from Santiago organised the Exército Libertador de Galicia, divided into two columns that failed in their attempts to take A Coruña, Ferrol and Ourense, before setting out in search of the enemy. His forces, deployed on the mountain's slopes with the support of the Guardia Civil entrenched in the houses of Raxó, resisted the advance of the government battalions, but were defeated. Days later, twelve of his officers were shot in Carral and went down in history as the Martyrs of Carral.