Village
A Pontenova, officially so named since 1984, is a municipality in the comarca of Mariña Oriental, in the province of Lugo, crossed by the Eo and Judán rivers. It was born in 1963 from the merger of the municipalities of Villameá, which bore that name until 1951, and Villaodrid. During the Middle Ages the territory was known as Honor de Miranda and fell under the jurisdiction of the episcopal see of Mondoñedo, granted privileges in 1199 by Alfonso IX of León; in 1348 bishop Alfonso Sánchez granted the castle and the land of Miranda in fief to Juan Fernández de Bolaño, and it was not until 1598 that the residents bought back the seigneurial jurisdiction of the bishops of Mondoñedo. Its mining past left calcination kilns and a railway that carried limonite down to the port of Ribadeo. It has 2,106 inhabitants.
Monument
Five kilns built by the Sociedad Minera de Villaodrid between 1902 and 1925 to calcine the iron before exporting it; they were built with brick brought from the Sargadelos factory and were recovered as industrial heritage around 1989.
Monument
The head of the narrow-gauge railway that between 1903 and 1964 brought iron ore down to the port of Ribadeo, some thirty-four kilometres away; restored along with the kilns, it now houses the tourist office.
Nature
The Eo crosses the municipality in the middle-upper stretch of its course and carves mountain valleys between Trabada, A Fonsagrada and the Asturian border; the bridge that gave the town its name is documented over it as early as 1645.
Nature
Declared by Unesco on 17 September 2007, it covers 159,379 hectares spread between Galicia and Asturias, with three SPAs, nine sites of Community importance and a Ramsar wetland; A Pontenova is one of its municipalities. Besides A Pontenova, it extends across the Galician municipalities of Ribadeo, Trabada, A Ribeira de Piquín, Baleira, A Fonsagrada and Negueira de Muñiz, and the Asturian municipalities of Castropol, A Veiga, Taramundi, Santiso de Abres and the three municipalities of Ozcos. It covers almost the entire basin of the river Eo, from its source at Fonteo to its mouth in the ría de Ribadeo, together with stretches of the basins of the Miño, the Navia and the Porcía. When it was declared, the area had close to 33,000 inhabitants, and most of its municipalities have been losing population ever since.
Curiosity
The iron was registered in 1894 and the concession came on 28 July 1895; large-scale working began in 1904 and followed seams as deep as two hundred and fifty metres until it was abandoned in the 1930s.
Activity
The Vía Verde do Eo, opened in 2013, is a twelve-kilometre non-motorised route that follows the bed of the old mining railway between A Pontenova and Santiso de Abres, already in Asturias, with its tunnels and cuttings. It is one of Galicia's two greenways -the other being that of the Salnés- and, like the rest of these routes recovered along old railway tracks, offers a route accessible on foot as well as by bicycle. It runs through the valley of the river Eo, the route by which ore was once carried down to the wharf at Ribadeo.
Monument
Batteries of kilns where the limonite extracted in the mines was calcined before being shipped; they were built with brick brought from the Sargadelos factory and are the symbol of the concello's industrial past.
Historical milestone
A 750-millimeter narrow-gauge line, almost thirty-four kilometers long, carried iron ore down the Eo valley to the port of Ribadeo; it ended up carrying passengers too, until its closure in 1965. Part of its route, between A Pontenova and Santiso de Abres, was restored in 2019 as a roughly thirteen-kilometer hiking and cycling trail integrated into the Vías Verdes (Greenways) network, running alongside the Eo river and crossing six lit tunnels and a bridge; nearby are the remains of two old power stations.
Activity
The course of the old mining railway, with its tunnels and cuttings dug above the Eo valley, is today walked and cycled as an industrial heritage itinerary between A Pontenova and the coast.
Nature
The Eo river rises at Fonteo (Baleira, Lugo) and runs some 99 kilometers before flowing into the Cantabrian Sea through the Ribadeo estuary, marking much of the border between Galicia and Asturias; its basin, of about 828 km², is suitable for salmon fishing. As it passes A Pontenova, the municipality that gives its name to the comarca, it runs hemmed in between riverside forests. In the early 20th century a mining railway was built along its course, between Viloudriz and Ribadeo, which boosted the area, and with electrification small hydroelectric plants were built, such as the Louredal plant, from 1932. The lower course forms part of the Río Eo, Oscos e Terras de Burón biosphere reserve, declared by Unesco in 2007.
Historical milestone
Until 1845 the territory was divided between Conforto, Miranda and Vilameá; in 1963 the town halls of Viloudriz and Puente Nuevo were merged, and on 9 June 1979 the municipality officially came to be called A Pontenova.
Monument
The name of the concello alludes to a new bridge raised over the Eo facing an earlier one that connected the villa with the bank where iron deposits had been worked since ancient times.
Food and drink
The Eo is one of the great salmon rivers of the north of the peninsula and the catching of the first salmon of the season keeps alive on its banks a ritual that goes back to the old fishing rights of the pesqueiras.
Monument
Raised between 1662 and 1664 to designs by Diego Ibáñez Pacheco, it crosses the Baroque with Renaissance and Neoclassical echoes; the gallery was added in 1713 and the upper body of the tower in 1744, and it belonged to the archbishopric of Oviedo until 1954.
Nature
The rego de Parada plunges in two falls of some eight metres in the heart of the fraga do Muradal, a step from the urban centre; a circular route of some three kilometres descends to its base passing the ruins of the muíño do Muradoiro.