Village
Sandiás is a concello of around 1,100 inhabitants built on the land once occupied by the Lagoa de Antela, drained between 1956 and 1958. Its first settlers lived in pile-dwelling lake settlements on the lagoon itself, and already in the Iron Age castros arose on the mountains surrounding the municipality. During Romanisation it was crossed by the Vía Nova, which linked Braga and Astorga and of which milestones remain at Vilariño das Poldras and Zadagós; the Antonine Itinerary, from the 3rd century, places here the mansio Geminas, a staging post and lodging house. Its main crop is the potato, and it preserves the ruins of a medieval castle beside the old route of this Roman road.
Monument
Raised between the 11th and 12th centuries on an isolated hill to watch over the Lagoa de Antela, it was attacked in 1368 by the Duke of Lancaster and later burnt by the irmandiños; of the castle only the tower remains, with walls almost four metres thick.
Nature
It was one of the largest wetlands on the Iberian Peninsula, about seven kilometres by six, at 615 metres above sea level and barely sixty centimetres deep on average; a 1956 decree authorised its draining, which was carried out from 1958 onwards. On the land it once covered, remains of lakeside settlements have been studied, investigated by Conde-Valvís in the 1950s. Today, in Sandiás, on what was once its north-western shore, a restored farmhouse houses the Centro de Interpretación da Lagoa de Antela, known as A Casa da Lagoa, with an exhibition on the history of the lagoon and of the areeiras that have since been environmentally restored.
Curiosity
The Casa da Lagoa, the popular name of the Centro de Interpretación da Lagoa de Antela, run by the Concello de Sandiás, occupies a restored old farmhouse in the centre of the town, on what was once the north-western shore of the lagoon. It was set up, with the backing of a Leader initiative to revitalise the rural centres of the Val da Limia, as a centre for the study of the Antela lagoon which, opened in 2008, explains its formation, its draining and the attempts at environmental recovery through an exhibition, remote-controlled cameras and audiovisual projections about the lagoon and the heritage of the area. It is complemented by recreational areas where the Roman-era channel can still be made out.
Activity
The Centro Ecuestre de Antela is a set of facilities of the Diputación Provincial de Ourense built in the concello of Sandiás, on the former lands of the Antela lagoon, drained a little over half a century ago. It is devoted to promoting horse breeding and to training riders, farriers and other trades linked to the equestrian world. It has a 1,400-by-20-metre speed track, known as the Hipódromo de Antela, and an Olympic-sized picadeiro, comparable to the best facilities in Spain. Besides the races held there, its main purpose is the training of sport horses in all competition disciplines, an offering now scarce in Galicia.
Monument
The castelo de Sandiás, also known as Torre de Sandiás or Torre do Castro, stands on an isolated hillock, at the foot of which lies the place do Castro, at the point where the Roman Vía Nova once ran and from which the whole plain of the Limia could be seen. Built on an ancient castro, perhaps in the first half of the 12th century, it took part in the border wars over possession of the county of the Limia between the kingdoms of Galicia-León and Portugal; it was stormed by the Duke of Lancaster in 1386 and razed by the Irmandiños in 1467, after which it was rebuilt. Today only part of the keep survives, which had a basement, three floors and an upper terrace, and from whose foot a wide panorama of the drained lagoon of Antela can be seen.
Monument
The Centro de Interpretación da Lagoa de Antela, also known as A Casa da Lagoa, occupies a restored old farmhouse in the centre of Sandiás, on what was the north-western shore of the lagoon of Antela. Run by the town council, it was set up with a Leader initiative for rural development and was created to mark half a century since the draining of the lagoon, to gather testimonies, tools and photographs of life around what was once Galicia's largest lagoon. It has an exhibition on the history of the lagoa and of the areeiras, now restored, cameras allowing live observation of the area's wetlands, and audiovisual displays on the lagoon and the surrounding heritage. It is the place where the memory of a landscape that no longer exists is preserved.
Activity
The Roman road that linked Braga with Astorga, the Vía XVIII, crossed the plain through this concello. Its courses and milestones can be followed on foot among potato fields and the remains of castros.
Historical milestone
The works begun in 1956 dried out the largest lagoon in Galicia to win farmland, wiping out at a stroke an ecosystem, an economy of rushes and eels and a whole imaginary of Limia legends.