Village
Navia de Suarna is a municipality (concello) in the province of Lugo, in Galicia, in the comarca of the Ancares Lucenses, with its capital in A Proba de Navia. In a mountainous area crossed by the Navia river, whose highest point is the Ancares pass, at 1,680 meters, it preserves megalithic remains and as many as twenty-five catalogued hillforts (castros), such as those of Monterrío, O Coedo or Cabanela. Its castle, dating back to the 11th century and later held by the Osorio family and the county of Altamira, was destroyed in the Great Irmandiño War and was rehabilitated as a private residence. The river is crossed by the Puebla bridge, of medieval origin, rebuilt in the 15th century over the remains of an earlier Romanesque bridge. On carnival Sunday the androlla festival is celebrated. It has fewer than a thousand inhabitants, after decades of emigration.
Monument
Navia castle, in the town centre of Navia de Suarna (Lugo), rises to the northeast of the town, on a lousa crag from which it dominates the crossing of the Navia river, spanned there by an early medieval bridge. Its origins go back to the 11th century: in 1037 Rodrigo Gutiérrez gave it as a dowry to his wife Senior, and over time it passed to the Osorio family and to the House of Altamira. In 1467 it was destroyed during the great irmandiña revolt and later rebuilt; it then passed to the Losada Quiroga and Freire de Andrade families, until the priest Manuel López Armesto turned it into a residential building, as it remains today, with its tower over the Navia river blending old elements with modern refurbishments.
Monument
Bridge of Roman origin over the river Navia, with a single pointed arch, high walls and a steep humpback roadway; it crossed the river at the point where the mountain roads towards El Bierzo passed.
Monument
Parish church that preserves a 13th-century Romanesque apse, one of the clearest examples of this style in a concello of twenty parishes spread over 242 square kilometres of mountain.
Monument
Church with a rectangular nave holding an 18th-century high altarpiece and a 16th-century Renaissance side altarpiece, in the same parish where the Roman camp of A Recacha was located.
Monument
Church with a Romanesque nave with a wooden roof frame and an apse covered by a barrel vault, a usual solution in the rural churches of this mountain area, where stone was combined with local carpentry.
Monument
A Roman military camp identified in 2011 in the parish of Rao, evidence of the imperial army's deployment across these mountains during the control of the territory and the mining exploitation of the north-west of the peninsula. It stands at 1,250 metres above sea level, on a spur of the Penamarela range from which it dominates the valley of the Balouta river and borders Asturias and Castilla y León, near the also Roman camp of A Granda das Xarras. Irregular in shape, adapted to the relief of the summit, it covers one hectare with a major axis of 160 metres, and an excavation by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Spanish National Research Council) brought to light picks, tacks and a whetstone.
Nature
Col at around 1,680 metres, the highest point in the concello, on the divide with León; it is one of the traditional passes of transhumance between the Galician and the Leonese brañas.
Nature
Rock formation with caves opening inside it, one of the most singular geological spots in a concello crossed by the Navia and by its tributaries the Ser, Rao, Moia and Bullán.
Curiosity
The concello has around twenty-five fortified settlements catalogued, among them those of Cantón and Cabanela, joined by a corridor of three hundred metres, as well as mámoas and dolmens at Ferreirúa.
Monument
A parish church of three naves with side sacristies, a plan uncommon among the rural churches of the Ancares, where the single nave roofed with a wooden framework predominates.
Monument
A hermitage of the parish of Muñís that holds a Baroque altarpiece, one of the scattered chapels of the concello together with those of Abrente, Marcelín and Molmeán, spread across twenty mountain parishes.
Nature
One of the most important rivers of the Cantabrian slope, rising in the hamlet of Busnullán, in Piedrafita do Cebreiro, beside the Way of St James, and running through the concello of Navia de Suarna from north to south, gathering the waters of the Ser, the Rao, the Moia and the Bullán, before forming the boundary between Galicia and Asturias and flowing into the Cantabrian Sea, already on Asturian soil, after draining a basin of 2,578 km². Along its course it crosses bridges of Roman origin, such as that of Puentes de Gatín, over the old Via XIX, and that of Puebla de Navia, the municipality's capital. Its valley, deeply cut between mountains, shapes the scattered settlement of the concello's twenty parishes, and further on, already in Asturias, it receives the Ibias, its longest tributary, at 60.5 kilometres.
Curiosity
Circular enclosures with high walls raised on the hillside to guard the beehives from bears and other animals; they are preserved scattered across the summer pastures of Navia de Suarna alongside broom fields and dovecotes.
Activity
The androlla is a sausage made from pork ribs, pepper, salt and garlic, stuffed into the widest section of the animal's large intestine, sometimes also with pieces of rind; it is eaten boiled, accompanied by cachelos and vegetables or a cocido, though it can also be roasted or grilled. It is a typical delicacy of south-eastern Ourense, Lugo and El Bierzo. Navia de Suarna, together with Viana do Bolo, holds its festival every year on Carnival Sunday: a celebration begun in 1991 in which the androllas are boiled in the square, in full view of the public, and handed out with bread, wine and raisin bica. The sausage's name comes from the French andouille, a word that in turn derives from the Latin inductile, “that which is inserted”.