Village
Parada de Sil is a concello in the comarca of Terra de Caldelas, in the province of Ourense, overlooking the Sil canyon, where the Balcóns de Madrid look out over an abyss of vineyard terraces; it has some five hundred inhabitants across 62.4 km² divided into nine parishes. In 1518 the cenoby of Santa Cristina became a priory of the monastery of San Esteban de Ribas de Sil; under the Ancien Régime it was called Chandrexa de Sacardebois, a name that changed when Galicia was divided into four provinces in the 19th century. In a hidden chestnut grove stands the Romanesque monastery of Santa Cristina de Ribas de Sil, with an 18 km route through vineyards and mills. At San Lorenzo de Barjacoba are the chapel and necropolis of San Víctor, and over the río Mao crosses the Romanesque bridge of Canceliñas.
Monument
Benedictine monastic complex, now disused, set on the banks of the Sil river, in the Merilán chestnut grove, beneath Mount Varona, in the parish of Cagide (Parada de Sil, Ourense). Its church, one of the finest examples of Galician rural Romanesque with a transition to Gothic, was built between the 12th and 13th centuries, although the first written records go back to the late 10th century; it was one of the most important monasteries of the medieval Ribeira Sacra, with a jurisdictional estate reaching as far as Cabeza de Meda and an economy sustained by vineyards and chestnut trees, which still shape the surrounding landscape. In 1508 it became a priory dependent on the monastery of San Esteban de Ribas del Sil, the start of a decline that culminated with Mendizábal's disentailment in 1835. It was declared a bien de interés cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 2008.
Monument
The capela e necrópole of San Vítor de Barxacova, in the parish of San Lourenzo de Barxacova, sits on a rocky outcrop in the valley of the Mao river, near its confluence with the Sil, at a crossing point where remains of Roman roof tiles and the Forcas sword, from the Bronze Age, were found. The chapel, of around twelve square metres, and its necropolis of anthropomorphic tombs carved in stone and oriented to the west, belonged to the couto of the monastery of Santa Cristina de Ribas de Sil, and until the 12th century to that of San Lourenzo de Barxacova. It has been systematically excavated since 2010, a campaign in which kitchen pottery and medieval coins have appeared, ruling out that it was a hermit's cenobium and pointing instead to a stable settlement.
Monument
A Romanesque bridge over the river Mao on which the mason's marks carved into the ashlars can still be made out, signs with which medieval stonemasons identified their work in order to be paid for it.
Monument
A cruceiro set directly on a peña, using the rock as its base, in a concello that also preserves several souls' shrines scattered across its villages on the edge of the canyon.
Nature
A viewpoint looking out vertically over the canyon of the Sil, one of the most impressive spots in the Ribeira Sacra, with the river hemmed in far below between slopes covered with terraced vineyards.
Nature
A reservoir that stills the Sil in the northern sector of the concello and makes it possible to travel the canyon by boat; its sheet of water is what can be seen today from the viewpoints on the upper rim of the gorge.
Nature
A tributary of the Sil that crosses the concello, hemmed in between woods and beneath the Romanesque bridge of Canceliñas; its valley concentrates kilns, chestnut-drying houses and mills recovered as ethnographic heritage. It rises high on the sierra de San Mamede, in neighbouring Montederramo, and flows into the Sil between the concellos of A Teixeira and Parada de Sil, forming in its final stretch one of the most impressive canyons in the province of Ourense, with a drop from 860 to 240 metres. Near the mouth stand the chapel and necropolis of San Vítor de Barxacova, and a wooden walkway allows this last stretch of the valley to be walked.
Curiosity
Three stone niches raised at the roadside to collect alms for the souls in purgatory, a popular devotion deeply rooted in the villages of the Sil canyon.
Curiosity
A Bronze Age sword found in the surroundings of San Vítor de Barxacova, where Roman tegulae also appeared: proof that this crossing over the canyon was frequented long before the Middle Ages.
Activity
Circular route of eighteen kilometres approved as PR-G 98 that starts in the municipal capital and links the canyon viewpoints with the Romanesque monastery of Santa Cristina, going down by cart tracks and vineyard paths among kilns, chestnut drying sheds and mills.
Monument
A Romanesque bridge over the river Mao, in the parish of Forcas, which preserves masons' marks on its voussoirs; it formed part of the paths that linked the hamlets of the canyon before the present roads.
Curiosity
At Cimadevila, Couto and Teimende these small stone niches with the representation of the souls in purgatory are preserved, where the residents left alms as they passed on their way to church.
Curiosity
Heraldic coat of arms of the Ourense municipality of Parada de Sil, proposed by Francisco Ogando Vázquez and Fernando González Suárez in March 1988 and approved by the Junta de Galicia through decree 563/1990, of 20 December of that year. The first and fourth quarters bear nine gold mitres on a green field; the second, the six blue roundels on silver of the Castro, counts of Lemos; and the third, a gold palm beneath a royal crown on a red field, crested with a closed royal crown. The whole sums up the concello's monastic and seigneurial past, historically linked to the monastery of San Esteban de Ribas de Sil.
Nature
The Sil canyon is a gorge carved out near the meeting of the Sil and the Miño, right in the heart of the Ribeira Sacra, and forms a natural border between Ourense and Lugo, shared between Nogueira de Ramuín, Pantón, Parada de Sil and Sober, covering 5,914 hectares and protected as a special conservation area. The difference in height between the waters of the Sil at Os Peares (109 metres) and the Pena do Xastre (1,014 metres) accounts for slopes of up to fifty degrees, at times almost vertical; it was shaped not only by the river's erosion but also by tectonic fractures from the Quaternary. On its slopes, especially those facing south, the terraced vineyards of the Ribeira Sacra designation are grown right down to the water; the stretch is toured by catamaran and on foot, along paths linking monasteries and hamlets.
Historical milestone
After several centuries of decline, the monastery lost its independence and was turned into a priory of the neighbouring house of Santo Estevo de Ribas de Sil, which absorbed its rents and its jurisdiction.
Historical milestone
The disentailment of 1835-1836 expelled the last monks and the complex ended up used as a working farm; that agricultural use, paradoxically, kept standing a Romanesque church that is today an essential visit in the canyon.
Activity
In the hamlet of Purdeus, parish of Chandrexa, the residents revived the old trade of treading chestnuts inside a sack to loosen their skin and dry them; the day also brings a fair of local produce and a communal chestnut meal.
Activity
The Mao river rises in the heights of the sierra de San Mamede, in the municipality of Montederramo, and flows into the river Sil between the municipalities of A Teixeira and Parada de Sil, descending from the 860 metres of the Leboreiro reservoir, where the A Fábrica da Luz hydroelectric plant stands, down to the 240 metres of the Sil, forming one of the most impressive canyons in the province of Ourense. Near the mouth, in the valley, are the chapel and necropolis of San Vítor de Barxacova. Through that same area runs a circular route of about 3.5 kilometres, with 1800 metres on a wooden walkway designed by the landscape architect Isabel Aguirre, which starts at the old hydroelectric plant and hugs the walls of the Mao canyon.