Village
Trabada is a rural municipality in the province of Lugo, in the comarca of the Mariña Oriental, with eighty-two square kilometers devoted to dairy farming and woodland and about 1,070 inhabitants. Its name, the ancient Tabulata, already appears in a charter of King Silo of Asturias dated August 23 of the year 775, by which he donated lands between the Eo and Masma rivers to build a monastery, and which is considered the oldest original document preserved in Spain. During the Peninsular War, in January 1809, its mayor Melchor Díaz de la Rocha gathered 300 residents armed with shotguns and sickles to halt the advance of the French troops of General Fournier toward Ribadeo, inflicting several casualties on them before the lack of support from neighboring juntas forced them to retreat.
Monument
A menhir marking the meeting point of the parishes of Arante, A Fórnea and Vilamartín Pequeno, already mentioned as a meeting of roads in the diploma of King Silo, dated 23 August 775.
Nature
An Iron Age fortified enclosure that gives its name to the head parish and which, together with the hillforts of Sante and Vidal, documents hillfort occupation of these slopes before the arrival of Rome.
Monument
The parish church of Sante, dedicated to San Xiao, is a 16th-century church remodelled in the 18th, which gives its name to the hamlet of A Igrexa, in the parish of Sante, within the municipality of Trabada; the very toponym of the hamlet, which today has barely more than twenty-five inhabitants, comes from the Latin ecclesia, "the place of the church". In its surroundings are also preserved the chapels of San Xosé, Santo Antón and San Bricio, evidence of the density of hermitages dotted across the municipality's parishes.
Monument
A parish church that preserves a Baroque altarpiece in the chancel and another from the 16th century in the side nave, two pieces that sum up the long process of furnishing the rural churches of the Mariña Oriental.
Nature
A range that closes the municipality to the south, with Cerrochao Alto at 770 metres and O Picato at 752; its slopes lie within the biosphere reserve of the River Eo, Oscos and Terras de Burón declared in 2007.
Curiosity
Dated 23 August 775, it is held to be the oldest document preserved on the Iberian peninsula: in it King Silo grants Abbot Esperautano land between the Eo and the Masma on which to build a monastery.
Nature
Two hillfort enclosures which, along with numerous burial mounds still unexcavated, make up an archaeological landscape barely studied in the municipality's inland parishes, between the Eo valley and the range.
Historical milestone
On August 23, 775, King Silo, who ruled the Asturian kingdom from Pravia after moving the court there, granted lands of the royal domain lying between the Eo and Masma rivers to Abbot Sperautano so that he might build a monastery, which came to be known as San Martín de Esperautano and of which no remains survive. The document, kept today in the archive of León Cathedral, is the oldest original document preserved in the Iberian Peninsula, and in it the town of Trabada is mentioned under the name Tabulata. Silo, who came to the throne through his marriage to Adosinda, daughter of Alfonso I, reigned between 774 and 783 during a period of peace with Al-Andalus, a contemporary of Charlemagne and of Emir Abd al-Rahman I.
Monument
A stronghold of the parish of Santa María de Trabada whose coat of arms brings together, surrounded by a laurel crown, the emblems of the Rocha, the Aguiar and the Pardo, three of the lineages that dominated these lands.
Monument
Raised in 1585 by Pedro de Miranda y Villar and his wife María Osorio, it displays on its façade the arms of the Asturian Villar, the Osorio, the Miranda and the Aguiar, a heraldic catalogue of the local gentry.
Monument
A 17th-century great house in the parish of Sante which displays the blazons of the Rocha, Baamonde, Luaces and Moscoso; it forms part of a municipality dotted with heraldic carvings since the Renaissance.
Monument
A gentry house of the parish of Sante which preserves on its façade the arms of the Díaz da Rocha, the lineage that produced Melchor Díaz de la Rocha, the man who in 1809 armed the residents of the municipality against the Napoleonic troops.
Historical milestone
Melchor Díaz de la Rocha summoned in 1809 the parishes of Sante, Vidal, Vilaosende, Cedofeita, Valboa and Couxela: three hundred residents with shotguns, pikes and sickles gave battle to the French and forced them to withdraw towards Mondoñedo.
Curiosity
Every Whit Monday, representatives of the seven parishes that took part in the combat of 1809 come with their banners and emblems to the sanctuary of Nosa Señora das Virtudes to commemorate that day.
Nature
A parish facing the tidal stretch of the Eo, where the river still rises and falls with the tide amid alder groves and meadows; it is one of the best salmon stretches of the river and a starting point for river routes. Its name refers precisely to the old name of the Eo river itself, once known as the río de Abres, and it borders the Asturian parish of Abres, in the concello of A Veiga. It belongs to the municipality of Trabada, the old Tabulata already mentioned in the oldest written document preserved in Spain, a donation by Silo, king of Asturias, dated the year 775.