Village
Boborás is a municipality in the province of Ourense, in Galicia, situated in the Carballiño comarca and in the valley of the river Arenteiro, with about 2,200 inhabitants across fourteen parishes. In the Middle Ages religious-military orders such as the Temple and that of Saint John settled in the area, leaving their mark on civil and religious buildings: the church of San Xulián de Astureses, Romanesque and built by the Templars in the 12th century, preserves its semicircular apse, and the Pazos de Arenteiro complex brings together seven stone manor houses. The municipality also preserves other Romanesque churches, such as that of San Martiño de Cameixa or that of San Mamede de Moldes, raised on an old castro, and the pazo de Moldes, birthplace of the writer Antón Losada Diéguez.
Monument
It mixes several styles on a Romanesque base: it keeps the medieval apse, a sundial carved into the wall and a series of decorated corbels that are among the most frequently cited features of the municipality's heritage.
Monument
A hamlet declared a historic-artistic complex that brings together the Casa de Arriba, A Asa and A Granxa do Mato along with the pazos of Cervela, O Currelo, Feixó, Laxas and Tizón, on the banks of the river that gives it its name.
Curiosity
A manor house near the church of San Mamede where Antón Losada Diéguez was born, one of the figures of Galician nationalism within the Irmandades da Fala; the municipality preserves traces of the Templars, of the Holy Sepulchre and of Saint John of Jerusalem.
Monument
A church of Romanesque origin built on a hillfort that in time became the parish cemetery; it belongs to one of the fifteen parishes into which this municipality of the Arenteiro valley is organised.
Monument
The igrexa de San Xulián de Astureses is the parish church of Astureses, in the municipality of Boborás: a 12th-century Romanesque church, small in size and quite well preserved, with a rectangular nave and a semicircular apse. It may have been founded in 1164, according to a date inscribed behind the main altarpiece; local tradition links it to the Templars, though the only thing documented is the presence of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, which in the mid-15th century was head of the commandery until it was replaced by the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. It retains carved corbels and a doorway with archivolts, with ornamentation considered among the finest of rural Romanesque in the Arenteiro valley, one of the best-preserved rural complexes in the comarca.
Monument
A 12th-century Romanesque church that presides over the hamlet. Its doorway preserves a cross on the tympanum and pairs of columns with capitals of plant and bird motifs, within the ensemble declared historic-artistic in 1973, the only rural one in Galicia.
Activity
A historical festival that since 2017 has revived in the hamlet the combat against the Napoleonic troops, with almost a hundred participants. It is the only re-enactment of Napoleonic setting held in the province of Ourense.
Historical milestone
Some three hundred countrymen led by Bernardo González del Valle, o Cachamuíña, stood up in 1809 to a thousand of Soult's soldiers on the bridge over the river Avia. Out of that resistance came the Batallón do Ribeiro.
Historical milestone
In Moldes (Boborás, Ourense), Antón Losada Diéguez, Galician essayist, philosopher and politician, was born on 22 December 1884, in the pazo of the town. From a fidalguía family and influenced by Carlism, he joined the Irmandade da Fala of Ourense and was a driving force and ideologue of the magazine Nós, as well as a corresponding member of the Real Academia Galega; he presided over the 1st Asemblea Nacionalista of Lugo in 1918, and in 1920 founded, together with Vicente Risco and Arturo Noguerol, the aforementioned magazine. He exerted considerable influence on the intellectuals of his time, although his own work — half a dozen poems, seven short stories and two political writings — remained largely unpublished until 1985. He died in Pontevedra on 15 October 1929, at the age of 44; the 1985 Día das Letras Galegas was dedicated to him.
Food and drink
The parishes of Pazos de Arenteiro, Albarellos, Laxas, Moldes and Cameixa are covered by the Ribeiro designation of origin, and their terraced vineyards above the Avia sustained the wealth of the pazos for centuries.