Village
Manzaneda is a concello of about 770 inhabitants in the Ourense comarca of Terra de Trives, beneath the Cabeza de Manzaneda, a summit that hosts Galicia's only ski resort and which it shares with A Pobra de Trives. The current name, one of the few Castilianised place names accepted as official in Galicia, has been documented since the 18th century; the traditional name was Maceda de Trives. Its capital preserves a medieval historic quarter, and the parish church of San Miguel de Bidueira is known as the cathedral of the lands of Manzaneda. In its mountains survive the glacial valley of Prada, carved by a glacier more than ten thousand years ago, and the castiñeiro de Pumbariños, a thousand-year-old chestnut tree with a girth of almost fourteen metres.
Monument
A church known as the cathedral of the lands of Manzaneda, or the cathedral of the mountains, because of dimensions and a design out of all proportion to the size of the parish it serves.
Monument
The parish church of the capital of a concello of 114.6 square kilometres set at 657 metres above sea level, with parishes scattered across Cernado, Cesuris, Paradela, Placín, Reigada, Requeixo and Soutipedre.
Nature
At 1,781 metres, Cabeza de Manzaneda is the highest peak of the Serra de Queixa and of the Ourense Central Massif; it is followed by Cabeza Pequena de Manzaneda, at 1,775. It forms part of this mountain, also called Cabeza Grande, whose summit is shared by the municipalities of A Pobra de Trives, Manzaneda and Chandrexa de Queixa, and where a geodetic marker stands. It has a prominence of 803 metres above A Gudiña, and its highest neighbouring peak is O Fial, at 1,841 metres. On its slopes lies the Manzaneda mountain resort, where skiing is practised, along with several restaurants nearby.
Nature
The castiñeiro de Pumbariños is a specimen of Castanea sativa that forms part of the souto de Rozavales, in the parish of San Martiño de Manzaneda, within the municipality of Manzaneda, in the Terra de Trives comarca. A monumental chestnut tree with an average girth of 12.15 metres —between 13 and 15 depending on the height at which the trunk is measured— and around five centuries old, which would make it the oldest known Galician tree; it was entered into Galicia's catalogue of singular trees in 2000 and forms part of the Ourense Oriental tourist route run by the Xunta de Galicia. It is a grafted specimen, like most of those in the souto de Rozavales, exploited for centuries for chestnut harvesting.
Nature
A wood of grafted chestnut trees worked for centuries for the chestnut harvest, where the Pumbariños specimen grows, considered one of the oldest living trees known in Galicia. Located in the parish of San Martiño de Manzaneda, it covers an area of around 1.8 hectares and was declared a natural monument in 2000 and included in the catalogue of singular trees in 2007. The Pumbariños chestnut, of the species Castanea sativa, has a girth of more than thirteen metres, a crown twenty metres in diameter and main branches of between six and eight metres; it is estimated to be around 500 years old. The souto forms part of the Ourense Oriental tourist route run by the Xunta de Galicia.
Nature
Extensive stands of woodland in the parish of Cesuris, which can be walked on a waymarked route, showing how chestnut and oak sustained the economy of these villages in the Ourense mountains.
Nature
Valley carved out by ice more than ten thousand years ago on the flanks of the Serra de Queixa, one of the clearest records of Quaternary glaciation in the mountains of south-eastern Galicia.
Curiosity
Uninhabited settlement at the bottom of the glacial valley of the same name, reached today only on foot along the waymarked route that climbs the valley from the lower ground of the concello.
Activity
Set on the summit of the Cabeza de Manzaneda, on land shared with A Pobra de Trives, it is the only ski resort in Galicia and works all year round as a mountain complex with a hotel.
Activity
Path that climbs the valley carved by ice more than ten thousand years ago and ends at the abandoned hamlet of Prada, among moraines and erratic boulders left behind by the old glacier.
Monument
The municipal capital preserves vestiges of its medieval layout, with stone houses, narrow lanes and remains of the seigneurial past of a villa that was the head of a mountain territory.
Activity
A walking itinerary through the broad chestnut woods of the parish of Cesuris, among stone walls, drying houses and centuries-old trees that are still beaten with poles each autumn to gather the chestnuts.
Curiosity
It is one of the few Castilianised place names accepted as the official form in Galicia: the traditional name was Maceda de Trives, from mazá and the abundance suffix -eda, and the present form is documented from the 18th century.
Food and drink
The chestnut was for centuries the bread of these mountains: it was eaten boiled with milk, roasted at the magosto or dried and milled into flour, and its grafted soutos are still the dominant farming landscape.
Monument
The brotherhood revolt did away between 1467 and 1469 with the medieval tower that dominated the walled town; over its ruins the counts of Ribadavia raised in the 16th century a fortified barbican that can still be made out among the houses.
Monument
The only entrance still standing of the medieval town raised in the twelfth century: of the four hundred metres of wall a hundred are preserved, with five metres of thickness at the base and close to ten in height.
Monument
A sixteenth-century building that bears on its façade the coat of arms of the Sarmiento with its thirteen roundels; it served as the prison of the seigneurial jurisdiction and today is restored and given over to cultural activities.