Village
A Fonsagrada is, with almost 435 square kilometres, the largest municipality in Galicia, and one of the highest, since its capital sits at 952 metres, in Lugo province. It has around 3,000 inhabitants and its name, from the Latin fontem sacratam, “sacred spring”, recalls the healing spring that served pilgrims on the Camiño Primitivo, which enters the municipality at the Alto do Acebo pass and leaves through the hamlet of Paradavella. Until 1835 it formed part, together with Negueira de Muñiz, of the municipality of Burón, whose capital was A Pobra de Burón, founded around 1200. At Montouto, King Peter I “the Cruel” ordered a pilgrims' hospital built in the mid-14th century. The territory preserves prehistoric remains, burial mounds and hillforts, with human presence dating back around 30,000 years.
Monument
Founded in 1357 by order of Peter I of Castile, it was the first pilgrims' hospital in Galicia for those entering by the Camino Primitivo, which here split into two branches, that of Puebla de Burón and that of El Padrón, the shorter and more frequented one. In 1698, under Charles II, it was moved from its original site to its present one, an exposed height over a thousand metres up next to the dolmen of Montouto, where the two branches met. Its last hospitaller lived there rent-free in exchange for lodging pilgrims, and the hospital was abandoned in the mid-20th century, shortly after the Civil War. Since the 1990s a romería has been held there on the saint's day, with a chapel built at that time. Now in ruins, it still stands beside the dolmen and the course of the old road to Lugo.
Nature
A megalithic tomb that stands beside the ruins of the pilgrims' hospital, up on the Alto de Montouto; the coincidence of a prehistoric monument and a medieval pilgrim hostel in the same field is unique on the Camino Primitivo.
Monument
Remains of a 15th-century medieval fortress in the parish of A Proba de Burón, in A Fonsagrada (Lugo), of which the tower and traces of the wall survive; it gave its name to the Terras de Burón, the old jurisdiction that grouped these mountain parishes. The fortress belonged to the House of Trastámara and around 1458 its rights passed to Pedro Osorio de Villalobos, an irmandiño captain married to Urraca de Moscoso. The local residents, who considered it a heavy tax burden, took it to court, and in 1490 the Real Chancillería de Valladolid issued a ruling, confirmed by the Catholic Monarchs, fixing what they had to pay and the services they owed it. The fortress had been destroyed during the irmandiño revolt of 1467-1469, in which about ten thousand men from Burón and Navia took part, and had to be rebuilt.
Nature
A fortified settlement of some two thousand years ago that holds the best-preserved hillfort sauna in the north-west of the peninsula: a 1st-century building with several rooms, a corbelled dome and some 120 square metres, excavated since 2015.
Monument
A spring behind the apse of the church of Santa María that gave the town its name, from the Latin fontem sacratam; the structure that protects it today dates from 1882 and replaced earlier ones built over the same source.
Nature
A megalithic monument whose upright slabs are still standing, one of the several prehistoric tombs scattered across the high pastures of a municipality that counts twenty-eight mountain parishes.
Monument
A suspension footbridge of some eighty metres slung over the River Navia that connects the hamlet of Riodeporcos, one of those places that the relief and the reservoir left hanging by a thread at the eastern edge of Galicia.
Nature
The Seimeira de Vilagocende, at 54 metres, is considered the greatest free-falling waterfall in Galicia: unlike other, taller waterfalls, here the río da Porteliña, which rises in the sierra de Liñares and flows into the río Lamas -itself a tributary of the Navia-, plunges in a single drop over a rocky amphitheatre surrounded by Atlantic woodland. It lies between the parishes of San Martín de Suarna and Cereixido, near the hamlet of Vilagocende, in the concello of A Fonsagrada. The site is set up for visits, with a walkway to the foot of the falls and a viewpoint at the top from which the whole drop can be seen; a hiking trail also runs through it.
Nature
A succession of small stepped waterfalls along the River Queixoiro, which can be walked on a short trail of little more than four kilometres that passes beside the hermitage bearing the same name as the place.
Nature
A waterfall of some twenty metres accompanied by the ruins of several watermills, a group that shows how these mountain municipalities made use of every last drop of their streams.
Nature
A well-preserved stand of native woodland included in the Natura 2000 Network as a site of Community importance; it survives on the slopes of a municipality where upland pasture and scrub predominate.
Nature
A river beach with a suspension footbridge over the river, in a hemmed-in spot whose name refers to the sheerness of the canyon; it is one of the few easy accesses to the water in this mountain municipality.
Curiosity
With 434.8 square kilometres and its capital at 952 metres, A Fonsagrada is the largest municipality in Galicia by area, spread over twenty-eight parishes scattered across the eastern mountains of Lugo.
Curiosity
A settlement now uninhabited, in whose surroundings traces of Roman mining survive, a landscape of ancient workings that the woodland has been reclaiming over the centuries.
Curiosity
The spring that gives the town its name has been identified with a Roman mansio, an official stop on the road that linked Lucus Asturum with Lucus Augusti, capital of Gallaecia; the Latin place name is thought to have given rise to the present one.
Monument
Founded in 1984, it brings together material from hillforts, Roman mines and burial mounds alongside the tools of the mountain trades, such as those of clog-makers, sawyers and basket-makers, and models of pallozas, hórreos and mills.
Activity
The Camino Primitivo enters the municipality by the Alto do Acebo and leaves by Paradavella, crossing the moorland of the Hospital de Montouto; it is one of the highest and most open stretches of the whole pilgrim route.
Nature
A mountain pass of more than a thousand metres in the parish of Monteseiro through which the Camino Primitivo enters the municipality from Asturias; its name refers to the hollies that cover the area and shelter many birds.
Nature
Natural balcony looking out over the canyon of the river Navia, which here forms the border between Galicia and Asturias, very close to the boundary between the two. From it one takes in the broken relief of the valley, with the hamlets hanging from the slopes and the reservoir at the bottom, and one makes out, wedged into the gorge, the abandoned hamlet of A Fornaza and the Asturian settlement of Riodeporcos.
Nature
A Fonsagrada is part of this cross-border biosphere reserve, declared by Unesco, which covers almost 160,000 hectares spread across fourteen municipalities, seven Galician —Ribadeo, Trabada, A Pontenova, A Ribeira de Piquín, Baleira, A Fonsagrada and Negueira de Muñiz— and seven Asturian —Castropol, Vegadeo, Taramundi, San Tirso de Abres, Vilanova de Oscos, Santa Eulalia de Oscos and San Martín de Oscos. It includes almost the entire basin of the río Eo, from its source at Fonteo to its mouth in the ría of Ribadeo, as well as stretches of the basins of the Miño, the Navia and the Porcía. When it was designated it had a population of 32,974, although almost all of its municipalities have been registering demographic decline.
Nature
A megalithic tomb popularly known as As Pedras Dereitas, raised on the range beside the old pilgrims' hospital of Montouto; it has lost the mound that covered it and today shows its slab-built chamber bare.
Monument
Ironworking complex driven by the water of the river Suarna that worked iron until the last quarter of the nineteenth century — 1875 according to one version, 1884 according to another — when competition from modern steelmaking put an end to this kind of installation that made use of the force of the water and the charcoal of the hills. Beside the furnace the mill, the store, the workers' dwellings and the chapel of the complex are preserved in ruins.
Curiosity
An uninhabited hamlet above the Navia gorge which still has its chapel and an hórreo standing; it can be seen from the Arexo viewpoint and is one of the most eloquent examples of depopulation in the Lugo mountains.
Nature
A pre-Roman fortified settlement set on the spur that separates the Covas and Valdobarreiro streams; it is visited by way of a waymarked route of some six kilometres starting from the hamlet of the same name.
Curiosity
The granaries of the municipality follow the Asturian-influenced model, square in plan, with a pyramidal roof and a finial at the apex, very different from the long hórreo of western Galicia; many are still in use.
Activity
First held in 1998 and declared a Festival of Tourist Interest of Galicia in 2018, it revolves around butelo, a sausage of pork rib stuffed into the animal's stomach and cured in oak smoke.
Activity
A trail of some ten and a half kilometres linking the Pántaras ironworks with the River Allonca by way of the birthplaces of the artists Manuel López Monteseirín and Benxamín Álvarez, to whom it owes its name.
Activity
An eighteen-kilometre route between Liñares de Bidul and Vilabol that takes in the industrial heritage of the valley, with the water-powered installations of the old ironworks as the thread running through it.
Curiosity
Large silver earrings of openwork craftsmanship, proper to the women of these mountains and passed from mother to daughter. They are one of the most recognisable pieces of Galician popular jewellery.
Activity
The oldest Jacobean route crosses the concello along ridges of around a thousand metres, between Montouto, Paradavella and the villa itself, situated at 952 metres. It is the highest stage of the whole camino in Galicia.
Food and drink
A winter sausage made with pork ribs and bones marinated and stuffed into the caecum, cured in the smoke of the hearth and boiled for hours. It is the chief dish of the pig slaughter in the high hamlets of eastern Lugo.