Village
Sobrado, also known as Sobrado dos Monxes, is a municipality of around 1,800 inhabitants in Terra de Melide, province of La Coruña, which grew up under the protection of its monastery, founded in 952 and refounded as Cistercian in 1142. Its name, which in Galician means upper floor or wooden flooring, is usually interpreted as “high place”, from the Latin superatum; the researcher J. Piel understood it as aedificium superatum, “manorial residence”, perhaps linked to a Latin inscription in the monastery itself. The municipality sits in a mountainous area of the Galician Dorsal; to the west and south rise its highest points, in the Cova da Serpiente range and the Corno do Boi and Bocelo mountains, among them Mount Campelo, at 806 metres, the highest point in the province.
Monument
The monastery of Santa María de Sobrado was founded around the year 951 by Bishop Sisnando Menéndez, son of the counts of Présaras Hermenegildo Alóitez and Paterna, who donated land to the monastery that year. By the early 12th century it lay abandoned, until in January 1142 his heirs, the brothers Fernando and Bermudo Pérez de Traba, handed it over to the Cistercians; Saint Bernard of Clairvaux sent a community from his French abbey, and on 14 February 1142 Cistercian life began there. After a later decline, in 1498 it joined the Castilian Bernardine congregation, which prompted the construction of most of its present buildings; the church was finished at the end of the 17th century and consecrated in 1708. It was suppressed in 1834 and declared a monumento histórico-artístico (former Spanish heritage-protection designation) on 3 June 1931.
Monument
Funerary chapel which, together with the chapter house, is one of the few remains of the fabric of the monastery refounded in 1142 and earlier than the great modern rebuilding; its medieval workmanship contrasts with the church and the outbuildings raised from the sixteenth century onwards and with the Baroque façade that today dominate the complex of Sobrado.
Monument
Military camp measuring 172 by 140 metres and covering 2.4 hectares, on a plateau at 480 metres, in the parish of Ciadella, Sobrado. Occupied between the 2nd and 4th centuries to guard the road between Brigantium and Lucus Augusti, it garrisoned between five hundred and six hundred soldiers of the Cohors I Celtiberorum, transferred from Mauretania in the year 123 and attached to the Legio VII Gemina by Hadrian. It had four gates, watchtowers and two main buildings, the Principia or headquarters and the Praetorium, the commander's residence, as well as barracks. It was abandoned in the 4th century when the unit was moved to Iuliobriga. Excavations in 1934 yielded pottery, glass, tools and coins dated from 86 to 270, now held in the Museum of San Antón in La Coruña. It is the largest Roman camp excavated in Galicia.
Nature
A lagoon of about ten hectares and between 1.5 and 4.5 metres deep, dug by the Cistercian monks between 1500 and 1530 to supply the monastery; handed over in 1992 to the Sociedade Galega de Historia Natural, it is included in the Natura 2000 Network.
Nature
Summit of the serra da Cova da Serpe, in the municipality (concello) of Sobrado, at 811 metres the highest point in the province of A Coruña, a surprising fact for a territory always associated with the sea; from its top it dominates the watershed between the Mandeo and Tambre basins. At the summit stands the Base Militar de Campelo, an army communications facility that once had a detachment of fifty people and today lies semi-abandoned.
Nature
The Mandeo rises in the uplands of Sobrado and runs down towards the ría of Betanzos, cutting into the woodland that bears its name; its headwaters share a divide with those of the Tambre, which also rises in this municipality.
Curiosity
More than two hundred tiles bearing the military stamp COH I CELTIB were recovered at A Cidadela, the evidence that made it possible to identify the unit quartered there; most of the material is displayed today at the Castelo de Santo Antón in A Coruña.
Curiosity
Abandoned after the disentailment of the 19th century, the monastery recovered its monastic life in the mid-20th century, and on 25 July 1966 a new Cistercian community settled in it, which runs the hostel on the Camino del Norte.
Monument
At this place in the municipality vestiges of a pre-Romanesque church are preserved, testimony to the network of small churches that existed in the lands of the county of Présaras before the Cistercian reform.
Historical milestone
Hermenegildo, the last Count of Présaras, founded the Monasterio de Sobrado in 952 and took vows there after being widowed by Paterna Gundesíndez; with this, all the properties of the county, which reached to the sea, passed to the monastery.
Nature
The municipality preserves a dozen fortified settlements spread through its parishes, among them the Castro do Cruceiro, As Castronelas and A Roda da Froxa, in Carelle, and the Castro das Lagoas, in Roade.
Curiosity
A saying collected in the comarca runs home de Melide, muller de Sobrado e vaca de Furelos, que os leven os demos, a sample of the mocking rivalry between neighbouring villas that the Galician stock of sayings reflects.
Food and drink
Arzúa-Ulloa cheese, protected by a designation of origin covering twenty-four Galician concellos, Sobrado among them, is made with cow's milk from the rubia gallega, Friesian and brown Alpine breeds, either raw or pasteurised. It has a lenticular or cylindrical shape with rounded edges, a thin, elastic rind of bright yellow, and a soft paste, ivory-white to pale yellow in colour, which can even spread out on the plate. After a minimum ripening period of six days, it develops an aroma ranging from fresh milk and yoghurt to notes of butter, vanilla, cream and walnut, with a slightly salty flavour and a characteristic touch of acidity; its texture, creamy and smooth on the palate, comes from the proteolysis that takes place during curing.
Activity
The Jacobean route of the North turns inland to spend the night beside the monastery before going down to Arzúa, where it links with the Camino Francés; the monastic guesthouse keeps up the reception of pilgrims.
Historical milestone
A royal order extinguished the Cistercian community and the disentailment left the monastery turned into barracks for troops against the Carlists; plundered and stripped of library and furnishings, it lay in ruins until monks from Viaceli arrived in 1966.
Monument
Roofed with a pointed vault, it holds in the centre an enormous thirteenth-century chimney supported by four sturdy columns; it is one of the best preserved monastic kitchens in Galicia and is visited within the Cistercian enclosure.