Village
Ribadeo is a port town of about 10,000 inhabitants overlooking the ria of the Eo, at the northeastern tip of Galicia, province of Lugo, capital of the comarca of La Mariña Oriental; it has been linked to Asturias since the Ponte dos Santos was built in 1987. It grew from an early settlement in the Porcillán and Cabanela docks, behind a fiscal wall, and received from Ferdinand III the Carta Puebla that granted it a weekly market, still held today. The county of Ribadeo eventually passed to the House of Alba, and the town experienced its heyday as the leading center of Cantabrian trade with the Baltic countries, exclusively importing spirits from Riga, which earned it the nickname Kümmel de Ribadeo. On its coastline lies the praia das Catedrais, and in the town center stands the Torre dos Moreno, built in 1915.
Monument
A house built by indianos in Ribadeo, commissioned by the brothers José María and Juan Moreno Ulloa, who had emigrated to Argentina and made their fortune there, and designed in 1912 by the architect Julián García Núñez and the military engineer Ángel Arbex; it was built around 1915. Eclectic in style with modernist elements, it has a ground floor, mezzanine, three upper storeys and a tower topped with a mansard roof and a dome supported by four caryatids; its structure, unusual for the area at the time, combines reinforced concrete and iron, with cast-iron galleries and polychrome stained glass on the main façade. Originally conceived as a building of rental housing, it has been Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 1997.
Monument
Fort San Damián was designed in 1605, already in the 17th century, to protect, at the Porcillán shipyard beside the Ribadeo estuary, the galleons of the Armada de Indias from the Dutch threat, and was completed in 1624 under the command of the marquis of San Damián. Abandoned in 1638, it was reduced to ruins by the English in 1719, during the War of the Quadruple Alliance. On its ruins the present castle was built from 1743, designed by the military engineer Juan Vergel and funded by the Real Hacienda and several neighbouring parishes and towns, among them Ribadeo and Mondoñedo. Dismantled in 1809, it remained abandoned until the state handed it over to the municipality of Ribadeo in 1969, and it was rebuilt between 1989 and 1992; today, overlooking the mouth of the Eo, it hosts exhibitions and cultural events.
Monument
The old lighthouse of Pancha island stands at the westernmost end of the Ribadeo estuary, in the municipality of Ribadeo, in the province of Lugo, linked to the mainland by an iron footbridge laid in 1858. Its construction was contracted on 31 May 1857; the tower, by the engineer Marcelo Sánchez Movellán, is set within a square building of 128 m² designed to protect it from storms. It was lit on 30 December 1859 with a fixed red light with a range of 9 miles and remained in service until 1 October 1983, when the new lighthouse, still active today with a range of 21 miles, came into operation. Since April 2017 the old lighthouse has functioned as two-bedroom tourist apartments, within the Faros de España programme.
Monument
The bridge de los Santos spans the Ribadeo estuary, linking Galicia and Asturias along the Cantabrian coast. Inaugurated on 29 July 1987, it was initially designed with the width of a conventional road; in 2008 it was widened to carry the A-8 motorway. It consists of 612 metres divided into five spans, three of them central spans of 150 metres. Its name recalls the chapels of San Miguel, in Ribadeo, and of San Román, in Figueiras, situated on either side of the estuary. Its construction altered traditional maritime activity: passenger launches were converted for tourist trips, and the height of ships built at the nearby shipyards was restricted. In 2013 Correos dedicated a commemorative stamp to it with a face value of two euros.
Monument
An 18th-century parish church with a central nave covered by a barrel vault on semicircular arches and three altarpieces, two Baroque and one Classicist. The parish is mentioned as early as 935 as ecclesia Santi Petri de Alanti.
Monument
A sanctuary at the place called A Ponte dedicated to Nosa Señora das Virtudes, whose interior preserves depictions of the miracles attributed to the image; it is the destination of the pilgrimage festival that brings the surrounding parishes together each year.
Monument
A cantilevered ore loading pier, with two metal sections of twenty-two metres and an overhang of thirty-two, able to load a hundred tonnes of iron an hour bound for Rotterdam, the Ruhr basin and British ports.
Monument
A 16th-century parish church, remodelled later, in the parish of A Devesa, the same one that looks out over the shoreline of the As Illas and Os Castros beaches, at the north-eastern end of the Lugo coast.
Nature
The beach of Augas Santas, declared a natural monument in 2005 and part of the biosphere reserve of the River Eo; low tide uncovers arches and vaults carved in the slate that reach thirty metres in height.
Nature
A beach about 1,500 metres long and between five and twenty metres wide in the parish of A Devesa, whose traditional name is Marbadás, with islets and caves accessible at low tide and, at low tide, a small natural pool sheltered by a rock. It forms part, together with the beaches of Reinante, As Catedrais, Esteiro, As Illas, Areosa and Olga, of the Zona das Catedrais within the Natura Network, and has held the blue flag since 1997. It is ideal for surfing, and since 2004 has hosted every year, on the last weekend of August, the Día do Surf, with a surf and bodyboard championship organised by local youngsters and the Escola de Surf Hola Ola.
Nature
A 750-metre beach barely nine or ten metres wide on average, beside the hamlet of Rochela, in the parish of A Devesa; at low tide it joins the neighbouring dos Castros beach, and at high tide the islets that give it its name remain visible. With fine white sand and moderate surf, it forms, together with the beaches of San Miguel de Reinante, As Catedrais, Esteiro, Os Castros, Areosa and Olga, the so-called Zona de las Catedrales, a protected natural area within the Natura 2000 Network. The combined dos Castros-As Illas beach received the blue flag in 2015 and has a lifeguard service, whose injured are taken to the Hospital Comarcal da Costa in Burela.
Nature
The ría do Eo, also called the ría de Ribadeo, is the estuary formed by the mouth of the river Eo together with the Suarón, on the Asturian side, and the Grande, on the Galician side; it is 10 km long with a fairly constant width of 800 metres, narrowing to 600 at its mouth -spanned by the dos Santos bridge- and widening to 1,200 in the Arnao inlet. Shared with Asturias and bordering the Principality, its mudflats and sandbanks -among them the great tesón- host thousands of waterfowl in winter. It has been included since 1994 on the list of wetlands of international importance of the Ramsar Convention, and is the core of the biosphere reserve that Unesco declared on 17 September 2007.
Curiosity
Rinlo is a fishing hamlet documented in 1268 as Porto de Rielo de Meirengos, part of the parish of San Pedro de Rinlo -an independent parish since 1896-, in the municipality of Ribadeo, set on a steep rock beside an inlet of the sea. In 1904 one of the first natural shellfish tanks in Spain was built there, making use of a rocky area where the sea entered; the success of the shellfish obtained led to the building of a second tank, now abandoned like the first, a few hundred metres away. The village today lives off percebe (goose barnacle) fishing and tourism, with a coastal promenade that skirts the old fishing installations and runs along the village front. Its patronal feast is held on 29 June, and at the end of July or beginning of August the percebeiros organise the percebe festival, with folk songs and bagpipers.
Curiosity
Emigration to the Americas left the town a catalogue of houses built by those who came back, with the Torre dos Moreno at their head; glazed galleries, tiles and glazed ceramic finials betray the fortunes made on the other side.
Curiosity
A convent of Poor Clares of medieval origin, today as well known for its sweets workshop as for the building itself; it stands in the old town of Ribadeo, through which the Camino del Norte passes before leaving the town towards Lourenzá. It was founded in the 11th century as a beaterio and became a convent in 1366, thanks to the donation of Ruy Sánchez, archdeacon of Santiago, to build the monastery of Santa Clara; a fire destroyed the complex in 1544, on the very day of the saint's feast. It retains a single-nave church and an 18th-century cloister with semicircular arches. In 1809 it was occupied and damaged by Napoleonic troops, who turned it into a military hospital, and in 1855 it nearly disappeared as a result of the Mendizábal disentailment.
Activity
The romaría das Cruces is held every Whit Monday, seven weeks after Easter, at A Ponte, in the parish of Arante (Ribadeo, Lugo), and commemorates a skirmish against the French troops of General Fournier during the Napoleonic invasion: on 29 January 1809, the residents of Cubelas, Cedofeita, Arante, Sante, Vidal and Valboa resisted the attack under the protection of Nuestra Señora das Virtudes, and when they were about to be defeated, the providential arrival of the residents of Ove decided the victory. Since then, seven banners and crosses, one for each parish, gather every year beside the bridge over the river Grande and pay obedience to the main banner, in a procession around the sanctuary. Declared fiesta de interés turístico de Galicia (Galicia's tourist interest designation for festivals) in 2018.
Activity
The coastal pilgrim route enters Galicia at Ribadeo after crossing the Eo estuary by the Ponte dos Santos and passes through the historic centre on its way to Lourenzá and Mondoñedo; the northern routes have been World Heritage since 2015.
Monument
The fortress, designed in 1605 under the command of captain general Juan Alonso Idiáquez de Butrón y Múgica, marquis of San Damián, was completed in December 1624 to protect the galleons being built at the Porcillán shipyard; in 1638 its cannons were moved to the Atalaia hill and the fort was left abandoned, being reduced to ruins in 1719 by the English during the War of the Quadruple Alliance. In the mid-18th century a new castle was built on its ruins, designed by military engineer Juan Vergel, whose current building dates from 1762-1763 and came to house twelve cannons. Dismantled in 1809, it later served as an Asturian military hospital until 1810 and was then left abandoned and looted; ceded to the Concello (town council) of Ribadeo, it was rebuilt between 1989 and 1992.
Monument
The Pazo de Ibáñez, in Ribadeo, is a neoclassical manor house built in the late 18th century by Antonio Raimundo Ibáñez, marquis of Sargadelos, the Enlightenment figure who founded the Sargadelos pottery factory and the Cervo ironworks, on an earlier building from 1568. It has a rectangular double-height plan with an attic, a facade of granite ashlar, a four-sided slate roof, and a portico of four pilasters topped by an Isabelline-style balcony cast in the old Sargadelos furnaces. On the left wall is a plaque dedicated to the founder, and the interior holds another plaque of his alongside paintings by Pérez Couto, Prieto Cousent and Pérez Martínez. Today it is the seat of the town hall.
Nature
A fortified Iron Age settlement in the parish of Vilaselán, overlooking the Ribadeo estuary, one of the sites documenting the castrexo occupation of this bank of the Eo before the town was born in the shelter of its port. With a well-defined circular plan, it covers about 230 by 180 meters, more than two and a half hectares, south of the islet known as Penedo da Ínsua. Three parallel ditches carved into the rock can be made out, eight to ten meters wide, separated by parapets, along with signs of an outer enclosure protected by another ditch. It shows no appreciable destruction or alteration, and its occupation spans from the Iron Age to the end of the Roman conquest. Today it is part of communal land.
Activity
A tourist route established in 2005 that links the viewpoints over the Ribadeo estuary and the open sea, among them Santa Cruz hill above the town, the Atalaia, San Miguel, the Cargadoiro and the one on Isla Pancha. It starts at the Plaza de España and reaches the Atalaia, next to the chapel of Nuestra Señora de la Trinidad, the oldest in Ribadeo, of defensive origin and with views over the estuary and the Asturian shore of Figueiras and Castropol. The San Miguel viewpoint, next to the marina, is a good spot to watch the summer lateen sail regattas; the Cargadoiro viewpoint occupies a former ore jetty next to the 18th-century Fuerte de San Damián; and the Isla Pancha viewpoint, a modern wooden structure next to the lighthouse, closes the route facing the Cantabrian Sea.
Food and drink
The convent of Santa Clara in Ribadeo, still active, preserves as its oldest parts a single-nave church from the 15th century and a cloister from the 18th. Born in the 11th century as a beaterio (a house of devout laywomen), it became a convent in 1366, and its nuns professed the rule of Saint Clare in the late 14th century. A fire destroyed the complex in 1544, on August 12, the very feast day of the saint. Above the door can be read the inscription Saint Clare ordered engraved in her convents: “Haec est domus paupertatis,” this is the house of poverty. Occupied by Napoleon's troops in 1809, it nearly disappeared after Mendizábal's disentailment. Since the 20th century the Poor Clares have kept a workshop famous for its sweets, among them the torta Primavera and the torta San Honoré.
Activity
The seafaring hamlet of Rinlo has held since 2004, at the beginning of August, a festival devoted to the goose barnacle that its residents tear from the shallows beaten by the Cantabrian Sea off the cliffed coast.
Historical milestone
At the Porcillán shipyard galleons were built for the Armada of the Guard of the Carrera de Indias and for the Squadron of Galicia; protecting them from the Dutch threat was the reason for the fort of San Damián.
Historical milestone
Fernando II founded the town of Ribadeo and brought to it the Mindoniense episcopal see, which for decades had its cathedral here beside the ría; the bishopric returned definitively to Vilamaior, present-day Mondoñedo, in 1219.
Food and drink
The port of Rinlo, seat of one of the oldest fishermen's guilds in Spain, made this soupy rice cooked with Cantabrian lobster its emblematic dish; it is served in a casserole, very brothy and with the shellfish cut up on top.