Village
Mondoñedo is a municipality in the Mariña Central, in Lugo province, of which it is the capital, with 3,303 inhabitants and an episcopal see shared with Ferrol. It was the capital of one of the seven historic provinces of the Kingdom of Galicia until 1833, and today belongs to the association of Spain's most beautiful villages. Its name comes from the Indo-European mund, mountain, and the Celtic word onna, spring or river. The episcopal see is already mentioned in 1112, when Queen Urraca I of León moved it to the present-day town, and in 1156 Alfonso VII granted it city status. One of the most remembered episodes in its history was the beheading of Marshal Pardo de Cela. It has a cathedral built in 1230-1248, and it was the birthplace of Álvaro Cunqueiro, with a museum dedicated to him since 2019; every October it holds the As San Lucas fair.
Monument
The cathedral basilica of the Virgin of the Assumption of Mondoñedo, nicknamed the “kneeling cathedral” for its proportions and low height, is one of the two episcopal seats of the diocese of Mondoñedo-Ferrol, together with the co-cathedral of Ferrol. Construction began in 1219 in a style transitional from Romanesque to Gothic, following the French model of Languedoc; it was open for worship from 1225 and was consecrated in 1248, although work continued through the 13th and 14th centuries. Its western façade displays a 14th-century rose window five metres in diameter between 18th-century Baroque towers. It was declared Monumento Nacional (a heritage protection designation) in 1902 and a minor basilica by Pope John XXIII in 1959. Inside is the cathedral and diocesan museum of sacred art.
Monument
The Sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios stands at the entrance to Mondoñedo, at the site known as Pena de Outeiro, on land that a group of Mondoñedo residents bought from the chapter in 1558 to build a small chapel with a pilgrims' hostel; after suffering severe deterioration, it was rebuilt between 1733 and 1738 on the orders of Bishop Sarmiento, with a Latin-cross plan and seven Baroque and Rococo altarpieces from the 18th century. Facing the sanctuary stretches the Alameda de los Remedios, one of the oldest in Spain, planted in 1594 by councillor Luis de Luaces, the setting for the festivities of As San Lucas, As Quendas and those of Os Remedios itself, where stalls selling pulpo a la feira are never lacking. Next to it stands the Hospital de San Pablo, from the same period, with the coats of arms of Mondoñedo and of Bishop Sarmiento himself above its door.
Monument
A fountain ordered built by Bishop Diego de Soto in 1548, as the inscription on its front recalls, where the prelate's coat of arms and the imperial arms of Carlos V appear. Álvaro Cunqueiro evoked it for the smell of its waters.
Monument
A medieval bridge with a single semicircular arch over the Valiñadares river, in the dos Muíños quarter, within the parish do Carme, in Mondoñedo; it is also known as the ponte de Ruzos. Built with rubble masonry slabs and topped with granite ashlar, the appearance it retains today is the result of a restoration in the late 18th century. The royal road once ran across it, and today the Camino de Santiago del Norte passes over it. Tradition links the bridge to the execution of marshal Pardo de Cela: his wife, Isabel de Castro, was bringing the royal pardon, but disguised canons kept her here while the marshal was executed in 1483 in the square of Mondoñedo cathedral.
Monument
The cemiterio vello of Mondoñedo, enclosed by walls of lousa and granite, is arranged on several levels that once served to distinguish the city's different social strata; on one of its sides civil burials were carried out, reserved for those who declared themselves atheists. Now restored as a natural area and public garden, with walking and leisure areas, it also holds the tombs of Manuel Leiras Pulpeiro and the composer Pascual Veiga, as well as that of Álvaro Cunqueiro, the writer born in Mondoñedo in 1911. It ranks among the city's notable buildings alongside the episcopal palace and the hospital de San Paulo.
Monument
The Hospital de San Pablo y San Lázaro, also known as the hospital de San Paulo, stands on the Alameda de los Remedios, in the upper part of Mondoñedo. It was commissioned between 1750 and 1775 by bishop Antonio Alejandro Sarmiento Sotomayor, who merged the hospital de San Pablo, the San Lázaro leprosarium and an old hostel, in the same Baroque period that gave the city the santuario dos Remedios and the convent of the Concepción. Built in slate and granite ashlar, with a rectangular plan and a central courtyard, it displays the Baroque coats of arms of bishop Sarmiento and of the city above its main door, with an 18th-century chapel and altarpiece inside. Since 1872 it has been run by the Daughters of Charity, who today devote it to the care of people with disabilities.
Nature
The largest limestone cave in Galicia, with more than six kilometres of galleries and a 75-metre drop. Closed to free access, it can only be visited with a guide along about three hundred metres of the Galería Central, on visits organised by the municipality since 2006. It is located at Supena, in the parish of Argomoso, and was first explored in the 1870s. In 1954 an expedition by the Club Montañeiros Celtas of Vigo discovered an underground river inside it, known as the río Celtas. A 1973 TVE documentary brought it to the attention of the general public, which caused an increase in visits and damage that made it necessary to install a protective grille in 1976. Excavations in 2002 found pottery and bones from the Iron Age near its entrance.
Nature
The Masma river rises at about 920 metres above sea level in the Sierra del Gistral, between the summit of Gistral itself and the Cadramón peak, and takes different names along its course —rego Pedrido, then río Tronceda— until, after joining the Valiñadares river, it becomes properly known as the Masma. It flows through the municipalities of Abadín, Mondoñedo, Lorenzana and Barreiros through the Mondoñedo valley before reaching the sea next to the Rapadoira beach, where it forms the ría de Foz, a protected natural area of 575 hectares. Its course, with the months of greatest flow between January and March, is included in the Zona de Especial Conservación Ría de Foz-Masma, which also extends to Lourenzá and Foz. Its waters are home to species such as the sea lamprey, salmon, common trout and eel.
Monument
Opened on 1 March 2019 at number 13 in the cathedral square, it occupies the house the writer moved into with his brothers and sisters in 1949; his birthplace, by contrast, is at number 1 in Rúa Méndez Núñez.
Curiosity
On 4 February 1569 the magistrate Luis de Luaces ordered trees to be planted here on pain of a fine and afterwards gave the townspeople an open-air meal: it is held to be the first tree festival in Spain and perhaps in Europe.
Activity
Considered the oldest continuously running fair in Galicia and one of the oldest in Europe, its origin goes back to 1156, when Alfonso VII granted Mondoñedo the privilege of holding an eight-day fair; another tradition links it to Bishop Martiño and the consecration of the cathedral in 1246. It used to be held in August, but was moved to October to fit the farming and livestock calendar, and its historic activity was the buying and selling of horses, mares and mules, with traders from Galicia, Asturias, León and northern Portugal. Today it combines that tradition with morphological competitions for Galician-breed horses, equestrian displays and the driving of the greas of horses through the streets of the historic centre. Declared a Festa de Interese Turístico de Galicia (official tourism distinction awarded by the Xunta de Galicia) since 1998.
Activity
Declared a festival of tourist interest of Galicia and rooted here since the 16th century, it revolves around the cathedral. Its most singular procession is that of La Soledad on Good Friday, in which only women take part and the Plorans is sung.
Monument
A house of nuns raised at the beginning of the eighteenth century in the old quarter of Mondoñedo; together with the monastery dos Picos and the abandoned one of Alcántara it completes the conventual ensemble of the old episcopal city.
Monument
A large building erected in Mondoñedo to train the clergy of the diocese of Mondoñedo; its bulk closes off the cathedral square to the south and recalls the weight the episcopal see once carried over the town. The seminary opened in 1572, one of the first three in Spain after the Council of Trent, although the current building, already from the 18th century, was built between 1770 and 1775, the year in which Charles III granted it the title of Real Seminario Conciliar de Santa Catalina. The façade, of dark slate from the comarca, is flanked by two towers and topped by a pediment bearing the image of the saint; its historic library, with a hundred or so incunabula, today holds more than 25,000 volumes.
Monument
The former sixteenth-century town hall opening with an arcade onto the main square, today converted into the municipal library; it is one of the oldest civil buildings preserved in the historic quarter.
Nature
The Salto do Coro is a waterfall on the regato de Argomoso, a tributary of the río Valiñadares, in the parish of Argomoso, in Mondoñedo. It has a single drop of about fifteen metres over a smooth rock, with a natural pool at its foot, on its way down to the valley of Mondoñedo, in the same karst setting where the cave of Rei Cintolo opens, the largest known cavity in Galicia. It is easily reached, on foot or by car, along an uphill path of just over half a kilometre from the bank of the Valiñadares.
Nature
A waterfall on the course of the Tronceda, one of the streams that come down from the sierra towards the basin of the Masma; its pools set among blocks of slate are a traditional summer bathing spot in the concello.
Nature
A hillfort settlement located in the parish of los Remedios, on the outskirts of Mondoñedo, and the main site of this kind in the concello, documenting the occupation of the valley from the Iron Age to Roman times. It has been excavated since 2002, a campaign in which houses and remains of material culture began to be recovered; according to these finds, occupation dates between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD, although carbon-14 analyses push its beginnings back to dates before our era. In 2004 two interpretive panels were installed, allowing free visits to the site, and in 2007 the concello itself published a book with the conclusions of the first three excavation campaigns, carried out between 2002 and 2004.
Monument
An exhibition space in Mondoñedo devoted to the world of Merlin, the wizard whom Álvaro Cunqueiro settled in the lands of Miranda in his 1955 novel, transferring the Matter of Britain to the landscape of the Mariña.
Historical milestone
The seat of the bishopric was moved from the old church of San Martiño, beside the sea, to the inland valley where the city was born; the cathedral would be raised shortly afterwards and Alfonso VII gave it urban rank in 1156.
Food and drink
A Mondoñedo pastry of puff pastry filled with angel hair squash and custard, covered with almond, cherry and candied fruit; it has been made in the city since the nineteenth century and is its most recognisable gastronomic emblem.