Village
Negueira de Muñiz, with 236 inhabitants, is the least populated municipality in Galicia, in the mountainous eastern area of Lugo, on the border with Asturias, within the Fonsagrada comarca; its rugged terrain reaches 1,033 metres at the Montes dos Chaos. Until 1925 it formed, together with the parishes of Fonsagrada, the former municipality of Burón; that year it separated, and in 1928 it took the name Negueira de Muñiz in honour of Antonio Muñiz Álvarez, an emigrant returned from Cuba who drove its creation. In the 1960s the Salime reservoir flooded land and homes and left Barcela and Ernes cut off for want of a bridge, which spurred emigration. The municipality preserves prehistoric remains such as the burial mounds of El Foxo and Vilauxín and hillforts such as that of El Carballín.
Monument
The parish church of the least populated municipality in Galicia, notable for the Baroque altarpieces it keeps inside, in a valley where most of the churches were left cut off by the reservoir.
Monument
A chapel whose origins go back to the 14th century, which keeps one of the oldest bells in this area bordering Asturias and from which much of the Salime reservoir can be taken in.
Nature
Reservoir built between 1948 and 1953 on the río Navia, in the Asturian Terra Eo-Navia, and inaugurated in 1955; its gravity dam, 128 metres high and built with 630,000 cubic metres of concrete, was at the time the largest encoro in Spain and the second largest in Europe. Its waters, with a capacity of 265.60 cubic hectometres, cover 685 hectares spread across the Asturian concellos of Allande, Grandas de Salime and Ibias and the Galician concello of Negueira de Muñiz, and they flooded the lowlands of the valley, splitting the concello in two and leaving the villages on one bank without a bridge. The works, directed by the engineer Enrique Becerril with the collaboration of the architect Joaquín Vaquero Palacios, mobilised more than 3,500 labourers. Today its narrow sheet of water forms a spectacular canyon.
Nature
A recreational area with tables, benches and barbecues, fenced by a wooden rail and looking straight out over the Salime reservoir and the almost vertical slopes that form the canyon of the River Navia.
Nature
At 1,033 metres they are the highest point of a municipality of 72 square kilometres with very broken relief and an almost alpine climate, with cold winters and frequent snowfalls over the Navia valley.
Curiosity
In the late 1970s a group of friends discovered the municipality's empty hamlets with the help of an old maquis fighter; within two years the commune had a hundred settled members, and their heirs are still there.
Curiosity
When the level of the Salime reservoir drops far enough, the bell tower of the old church of Barcala emerges in the middle of the bed of the Navia, one of the churches that were left under water in the 1960s.
Curiosity
In the parish of Barcela, a commune formed by people of diverse ideological leanings —hippie culture, environmentalism, educational reform, naturism— was set up in 1977, advocating a free life removed from capitalist consumption. The isolation of these hamlets, cut off since 1956 by the building of the Salime reservoir, made El Foxo a fitting place for the project: it came to bring together more than two hundred members who sustained themselves through livestock farming, self-sufficiency, fishing and small-scale sales, under a system of collective labour. Shortages and internal conflicts gradually wore the experiment down, and after several reformulations it entered a phase of winding-down in 2017, nearly four decades after its founding, in one of the least-populated concellos in Galicia.
Monument
A small rural chapel in the parish of Ouviaño which holds an altarpiece of the late 19th century; it is one of the seven hermitages scattered across the municipality, along with those of Pelou, Seira, Vilaseca and Santa Baga.
Monument
Prehistoric burial mounds located at the places known as O Foxo and Vilauxín, the oldest evidence of human occupation in this mountainous corner of the upper Navia basin.
Curiosity
A rock formation listed among the municipality's heritage features, whose name points to the mouras and enchanted treasures of Galician mythology, often associated with striking crags and castros.
Monument
A crossing over the Navia built at the beginning of the 20th century and later altered to adapt it to the rising waters of the Salime reservoir, a witness to how the dam reorganised the valley's communications.
Nature
The Navia runs deeply hemmed in through the municipality and here takes in the waters of the rivers Couso and Ibias; its narrow valley, with its steep slopes, marks the natural boundary between Galicia and western Asturias.
Monument
Church of the end of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century, of Latin-cross nave and with eighteenth-century Baroque altarpieces added in a later remodelling; it is the religious building of greatest standing in the concello. Together with the rural Santiago de Ouviaño it forms the religious heritage of the least populated municipality in Galicia.
Nature
The Salime reservoir dams the river Navia in a deep canyon that forms the border between Galicia and Asturias, with a sheet of water covering 685 hectares spread across the Asturian concellos of Allande, Grandas de Salime and Ibias and the Galician one of Negueira de Muñiz. It was built between 1948 and 1953, designed by engineer Enrique Becerril with the collaboration of architect Joaquín Vaquero Palacios, and became the largest reservoir in Spain and the second largest in Europe, with a height of 132 metres. A 36-kilometre cable car was laid to the port of Navia, bringing materials for more than 3,500 workers from other regions, mostly Andalusia. Its slopes, abandoned after the exodus of the sixties, are today covered by one of the most extensive and wild forests in Galicia.
Historical milestone
The municipality was born in 1928 at the instigation of Antonio Muñiz Álvarez, who sought to bring these hamlets of the Navia out of their winter isolation. His surname was incorporated into the place name of the new concello.
Historical milestone
The construction of the Salime reservoir, on the river Navia, took up land and roads of Negueira de Muñiz and caused a massive emigration: from the 1,534 inhabitants it had in 1930, the concello dropped to just over two hundred, the least populated in Galicia. The project, the work of engineer Enrique Becerril with the collaboration of architect Joaquín Vaquero Palacios, was conceived in the mid-1940s and the works lasted from 1946 to 1953: the riverbed had to be diverted, a tunnel of more than 30,000 cubic metres excavated, and four settlements built to house more than 3,500 workers who came from other regions of Spain, mostly Andalusia. With a height of 132 metres above its foundations, it was in its day the largest reservoir in Spain and the second largest in Europe.