Village
Paradela is a concello of about 1,600 inhabitants situated in the southwest of the province of Lugo, between the valley of the Miño river and the Sarria depression, through which the Camino Francés to Santiago passes; it forms part of the Ribeira Sacra. It preserves three old monasteries: San Facundo de Ribas de Miño, from the 13th century, Santa María de Castro de Rei and Santa María de Loio, the latter linked to the founding of the Order of Santiago according to the bull of Pope Alexander III. The municipality's coat of arms recalls this past with a mitre for the monastery of Loio and a cross of Santiago for the passage of the Way, where there were important pilgrim hospitals. Its name, a diminutive of the Latin parata, alludes to a height or a stop on the way.
Monument
In this house in the Loio valley the twelve knights who gave rise to the Order of Santiago came together in 1170, under Fernando II; the bull of Alexander III of 1175 that approved the order names the monastery expressly.
Monument
The monastery of San Fagundo de Ribas de Miño was, according to the researcher Nicandro Ares, a subsidiary priory of the Cistercian monastery of Castro de Rei; its name refers to the banks of the river Miño (ripas minium). Of that 13th-century complex, overlooking the bank of the Miño in the stretch of the Ribeira Sacra corresponding to Paradela, mainly the church survives, built above the valley now flooded by the reservoir.
Curiosity
It is the most photographed marker on the Camino in Galicia: it shows the minimum distance that must be walked to obtain the Compostela, and since July 2016 it has stood in the parish of Ferreiros, between Mirallos and A Pena.
Nature
Highest point of the concello, at 838 metres, on the divide between the Miño valley and the Sarria depression. It commands the descent from the high ground down to the Miño, already within the Ribeira Sacra, over a territory of low hills and scattered hamlets spread across eighteen parishes, through which the French Way runs towards Portomarín.
Nature
The Miño, stilled by the Belesar reservoir, traces the western limit of the municipality and brings it into the Ribeira Sacra, with terraced slopes, chestnut groves and riverside woods dropping steeply to the water.
Activity
A little over twenty kilometres crossing the municipality of Paradela from side to side by way of Ferreiros and A Pena; it is the day with the most walkers on the whole pilgrim network, because it passes the hundred-kilometre marker.
Monument
The mosteiro de San Facundo de Ribas de Miño, from the 13th century, overlooks the bank of the Miño at the heart of the Ribeira Sacra, in the parish of the same name, in Paradela. According to researcher Nicandro Ares, it was a subsidiary priory of the Cistercian monastery of Castro de Rei, and its name recalls the banks of the Miño, from the Latin ripas minium. Of its complex, the church survives, with a doorway of archivolts and a dominant position over the river canyon.
Nature
A stretch of the Miño in which the river is hemmed in between slopes of more than three hundred metres terraced with vineyard, within the landscape complex of the Ribeira Sacra; the Belesar reservoir stills its waters.
Historical milestone
Tradition places at the monastery of Loio the canons who joined the knights who founded in 1170 the military Order of Santiago, created to protect pilgrims.
Food and drink
The Ribeira Sacra designation of origin, established in 1996 and registered with the European Union in 2004, brings together vineyards from the provinces of Lugo and Orense spread across five sub-zones, among them Ribeiras do Miño. Mencía is the predominant red variety, followed at a distance by others such as brancellao, sousón or caíño tinto, while among the whites godello and albariño stand out. The shelter of the rivers and the southern orientation of the slopes favour the ripening of the grapes, in vineyards that as far back as Roman times produced wines described as the liquid gold of the Sil. The terraced vineyards above the Miño, in Paradela, belong to this sub-zone, where mencía yields light, fruity red wines, hand-harvested on the slopes.