Village
Rubiá is a concello in the comarca of Valdeorras, on the border between Galicia and the province of León, with about 1,500 inhabitants spread across ten parishes and seventeen settlements. Its relief is predominantly mountainous: to the north-west stretches the Serra da Enciña da Lastra, within its natural park, whose limestone draws a landscape unusual for Galicia, while to the west rises the sierra de la Aguja, above 1,100 m. The municipality reaches 1,277 m at Penaguillón, on the boundary with O Barco de Valdeorras, and drops to 370 m on the banks of the Sil; the village sits at 536 m beside the Cigüeño river. The church of Pardollán preserves Romanesque fabric, and its sanctuaries hold baroque carvings by Gregorio Español.
Nature
The Parque Natural da Serra da Enciña da Lastra, declared in 2002 in the concello of Rubiá, on the boundary between Valdeorras and El Bierzo, protects a limestone valley of steep slopes and cliffs, among which stand out the Pena Falcoeira, the Val do Inferno and the penedos de Oulego, whose highest points are O Piornal, at 1,529 metres, and the Pena Tara, at 1,089. Owing to its position on the border between the Mediterranean and Eurosiberian regions, it holds the finest karst landscape in Galicia, with more than 450 taxa of vascular flora, 62 of them found only here, such as Petrocoptis grandiflora and Armeria rothmaleri. The limestone ground has formed numerous caves, called here palas, with important bat colonies, and among its birds of prey the vulture, the golden eagle and the peregrine falcon stand out.
Nature
The Covas da Enciña da Lastra are a network of caves and potholes —called palas in local speech— cut into marbled limestone within the Parque Natural de la Serra da Enciña da Lastra, in Rubiá, at the far north-east of Ourense, on the border with the León district of El Bierzo. The lower hardness of the limestone ground of this range, declared a natural park in 2002 and covering more than 3,100 hectares, favoured the formation of these caves, which shelter some of the most important bat colonies in Galicia, with at least nine documented species. The surroundings, on the border between the Mediterranean and Eurosiberian regions, also preserve a notable population of birds of prey, among them the griffon vulture, the golden eagle and the peregrine falcon.
Nature
Limestone walls more than 200 metres high looking down on the gorge of the Sil at the boundary with El Bierzo; more than a hundred bird species breed on them, among them the Egyptian vulture, the golden eagle and the peregrine falcon.
Activity
A waymarked path, PR-G 144, that runs between the castros of the municipality as far as the village of Nivieira, crossing the driest landscape in Galicia, with barely 594 millimetres of rain a year and an average of 12.9 degrees.
Monument
A Romanesque church in the parish of Pardollán, in a municipality of ten parishes that also preserves Baroque religious statuary, with works attributed to the sculptor Gregorio Español, active between Galicia and the kingdom of León.
Monument
Manor house of the settlement of Rubiá, the main example of civil architecture of the concello along with the ponte of Regueiral; the parish church holds a Baroque altarpiece of the rosary and the twelve apostles.
Nature
A holm oak (Quercus ilex subsp. ballota) legally recognised as a singular tree by the Xunta de Galicia, standing beside the access road to the place of Covas, in the parish of the same name, within the Serra da Enciña da Lastra. It stands 18 metres tall with a trunk perimeter of 650 centimetres at the base, from which three thick branches emerge; it is estimated to be about 500 years old.
Nature
Fortified settlement of the concello of Rubiá which, together with the castro of Pardellán, documents the pre-Roman occupation of this eastern end of Galicia, already on the threshold of El Bierzo and the Sil valley.