Village
Baleira is a mountain municipality of around 1,100 inhabitants, in the Fonsagrada comarca, in eastern Galicia, whose capital, O Cádavo, stands close to 1,050 metres among the eastern ranges that form a natural border with Asturias. The territory is divided into twelve parishes and one hundred and twenty-five population entities. Livestock farming, with dairy cattle in the Eo valley and rubia gallega cattle for meat in the higher areas, employs almost three out of every four workers, while farming is practised mostly for subsistence. To the north of the municipality lies the Marronda forest, protected for its forestry and ecological richness, and the Camiño Primitivo to Santiago crosses its territory.
Monument
Parish church whose origins go back to the eleventh century, one of the oldest in the eastern Lugo mountains and in a concello spread across twelve parishes between the ranges of O Pozo and A Lastra, right on the Primitive Way. The municipality also has the church of San Pedro da Esperela, with eighteenth-century Baroque altarpieces.
Monument
A church rebuilt in the 18th century that keeps Romanesque features from the earlier fabric; it stands in the parish of Esperela, the same one that contains the spot known as Campo da Matanza.
Monument
A church raised between the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th in the parish of Retizós, one of several in the municipality that also keep chapels scattered through the hamlets, such as those of Castro, Vilarín and Cabreira.
Monument
A manor house in the parish of Córneas, one of the municipality's two examples of noble architecture along with the Casa de Luaces; its surroundings preserve hórreos of the traditional build of the Lugo mountains.
Monument
An old gentry house at the place of Vilaselle, evidence of the small rural nobility that dominated these uplands; around it survive pallozas, cabozos and trobos of the comarca's vernacular architecture.
Monument
Roman gold workings opened on the hill of Vilagarcía, proof that imperial gold mining also reached these mountains of eastern Lugo, far from the great open pits of Las Médulas.
Nature
A Natura 2000 protected area of 1,211 hectares that holds the westernmost beech woods in Europe alongside oaks, chestnuts and hollies, with more than a hundred and seventy species of trees and shrubs recorded.
Nature
A mountain alignment that reaches 1,049 metres at the Penas de Pasadama and 958 at the Padornelo; its slopes feed the first streams of the Navia, the Eo and the Neira, all of which rise in this municipality.
Nature
The serra da Lastra runs from north to south between the concellos of A Fonsagrada and Baleira, at an average altitude of around 736 metres. Its highest point is the pico do Padornelo, at 958 metres above sea level. It closes off the concello of Baleira to the south, in an area of brañas, peat bogs and communal pastures where cattle and sheep have traditionally grazed, sustaining the municipality's farming and livestock economy.
Curiosity
In a recreational area in O Cádavo stands a piece of sculpture designed by Antoni Gaudí for the church of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, the only one from that project to be found away from the building itself.
Curiosity
The Campo da Matanza is a relatively flat hill about 840 metres high, in the parish of Esperela, municipality of Baleira; the 2013 Plan Xeral de Ordenación Municipal lists eight mámoas or burial mounds there, some with the mound mass heavily disturbed by pine planting and others better preserved, up to twenty metres in diameter and a metre high, with looters' pits in which stones possibly indicating the remains of armour have been found. Nearby stands the old football pitch known as A Medorra. Oral tradition places a battle there, in the early 9th century, in the time of Alfonso II, between Christian and Muslim troops, and excavations carried out at the site have brought to light remains of armour, spurs and human bones.
Activity
A 21-kilometre circular trail, waymarked as PR-G 145, that runs through the fraga of A Marronda and allows walkers to pass beneath the westernmost beech woods on the European continent, in the north of the concello. The forest, declared a special area of conservation, extends between the villages of A Braña, Mendreiras and Martín, over an area expanded in 2002 to 1,239 hectares at altitudes between 500 and 700 metres. It preserves a remarkable diversity of native trees and shrubs, with changing colours that intensify in autumn; the area is notable for buildings adapted to the mountain environment, such as square or circular hórreos with straw-thatched roofs (teito de palla). It can also be admired from the local road LU-750, where the forest drops sheer down to the río Martín.
Activity
A monthly fair held on the twelfth of every month in the municipal capital, a meeting point for stock farmers and the residents of the scattered parishes and one of the traditional trading dates of these mountains.
Monument
An 18th-century church whose Baroque interior is presided over by an altarpiece divided into two tiers; it stands in a hamlet on the Camino Primitivo whose layout betrays the earlier existence of a castro.
Monument
A megalithic necropolis on Mount Campo da Matanza, in the parish of A Esperela, in the concello of Baleira, north-east of O Cádavo, at around 840 metres of altitude on a relatively flat surface. The 2013 General Municipal Development Plan recorded some eight medorras, or burial mounds, there, some with their tumulus mass much disturbed by pine plantations and others better preserved, with a diameter of around 18 metres and a height close to a metre; the largest reaches 20 metres along its north-south axis. Nearby is the old football pitch known as A Medorra, and oral tradition places here, in the early ninth century, a battle between Christian and Muslim troops.
Nature
Rock shelter with evidence of prehistoric occupation which in the last century came to serve as a dwelling for a blacksmith. In 2017 schematic paintings in red with zigzags, angles and anthropomorphic figures were identified on its walls, the first group of this kind documented in Galicia; its cataloguing and dating were carried out by the heritage staff of the Xunta, and the occupation of the shelter runs from the fourth to the second millennium BC.
Nature
The concello has catalogued fourteen fortified Iron Age settlements, among them the castros of Antiguallas, do Tesouro, de Cubilledo, da Degolada, de Córneas and de Valdería, spread across the low hills and heights that dominate the Primitive Way and the inland valleys.
Curiosity
A Degolada is one of the four hamlets —together with O Castro, O Couto and Eiros— that make up the parish of San Lourenzo da Degolada, in the concello of Baleira, set at an average altitude of 740 metres on the southern slope of the Serra da Lastra, along which the original route runs before reaching the Alto da Fontaneira. On a nearby slope, remains of the Castro culture are preserved. The parish church, dedicated to San Lourenzo, stands in the neighbouring hamlet of O Couto: it is rectangular in plan and of modern construction, though it preserves elements of the original fabric and, on the high altar, a simple Baroque altarpiece. A Degolada preserves the vernacular architecture typical of this Lugo mountain area and gives its name to the parish.
Activity
A waymarked trail, the PR-G 145, of a little over twenty-one kilometres on a circular course, crossing the beech wood of A Marronda and the headwaters of the Eo inside the Eo, Oscos e Terras de Burón Biosphere Reserve.
Nature
One of the most westerly and best preserved beech woods in Europe, at the limit of the species' range. It is walked by the approved path PR-G 145, a circuit of some twenty-one kilometres.
Food and drink
The heather honey of the hills and the mushrooms gathered in the beech wood and in the oak woods sustain a mountain cuisine completed by game and by home-cured pork products.