Village
Alfoz do Castrodouro is a municipality in Lugo province, in the Mariña Central, whose territory climbs from the valley up to the 1,046-metre summits of the Serra do Xistral. Its Castro de Ouro castle, raised on a former hillfort and rebuilt in the early Middle Ages, recalls Marshal Pedro Pardo de Cela, who, after resisting a three-year siege by Fernando de Acuña at the fortress of A Frouxeira, was finally captured on 7 December 1483 in this castle and executed ten days later in the square of Mondoñedo cathedral. The municipality enjoyed a period of prosperity in the 18th century thanks to its textile industry, before losing population through emigration to America in the 19th century. It now has around 1,500 inhabitants.
Monument
A medieval fortress of the see of Mondoñedo which in the 15th century was held by Marshal Pedro Pardo de Cela, having come to his wife Isabel de Castro as a wedding gift. After the execution of 1483 it returned to the bishopric and today it preserves the keep.
Nature
A range of circular outline formed by a great mass of granodiorite that stretches from near Mondoñedo as far as Ferreira do Valadouro; it peaks at 838 metres and erosion has left striking boulders and crags on its slopes.
Nature
The fervenza do Escouridal is a waterfall on the Guilfonso river, a tributary of the Ouro, located on the boundary between the municipalities of Alfoz do Castrodouro and O Valadouro, on the slopes of the Sierra del Xistral, an area of high rainfall. Counting its different stretches, it is among the highest in Galicia: it does not fall in one drop, but in a succession of terraces, pools and granite chutes, with a drop of about eighty metres in its central stretch that approaches 150 metres if the whole fall is added together. It can be reached from both O Cadramón and O Pereiro, the latter a shorter route —just over three kilometres round trip— although its final stretch is considered of medium difficulty.
Activity
Held on the third Saturday in July since 1999 around the castle, every year it goes back to 1483, the date of the capture of Marshal Pardo de Cela, with equestrian tournaments, workshops, street theatre and medieval dinners.
Monument
A 12th-century Romanesque temple in the parish of Adelán, the oldest religious building in the concello; in the same place stand the tower of Adelán and the mill of Salvaterra, on the río Ouro. The very settlement where it stands, known as A Igrexa, takes its name from this temple, and is today a small place with barely a dozen residents within the parish of Adelán, in the concello of Alfoz do Castrodouro.
Monument
A fifteenth-century Gothic church at the foot of the castle of Castro de Ouro, in the parish that gave the municipality its name; its ashlar fabric preserves the austerity of the rural Gothic of the Mariña of Lugo.
Nature
A summit of 763 metres in the sector of Alfoz that rises towards the sierra of the Xistral, the greatest altitude in the concello after its foothills; from it the whole valley of the río Ouro is taken in.
Curiosity
A granite block in the parish of O Pereiro set in such a way that it can be moved with a push without ever falling; rocking stones were held to be places of justice or of ordeal in Galician tradition.
Activity
A monthly fair held on the thirteenth of each month in O Castrodouro, a survivor of the system of fixed fairs that ordered Galician rural trade; in the same concello the fair of Correlos, on the first Wednesday, is also kept up.
Historical milestone
Marshal Pardo de Cela resisted in this castle the advance of the Catholic Monarchs against the Galician nobility until in 1483 he was handed over by his own men; shortly afterwards he was beheaded in the square of Mondoñedo.
Food and drink
The río Ouro rises in the serra do Xistral, in the parish of Pereiro, at 700-800 metres of altitude, and runs about 30 kilometres before flowing out at Fazouro, forming the natural boundary of the Val do Ouro between Alfoz do Castrodouro and O Valadouro. In its upper stretch, with the fervenza do Escouridal, rapids and clear waters predominate, with abundant small common trout, while in the lower part the sea trout can be fished, which comes up the river every year from the ría to spawn. Its banks, protected as a special conservation area, sustain a winter cuisine in which trout from the Ouro and its tributaries Beloi, Covas and Bao goes together with roast kid and cured lacón.