Village
Monterrei is a municipality of about 2,400 inhabitants in the comarca of Verín, in the province of Ourense, in the valley of the Búbal river, a tributary of the Támega, between 380 and 1,094 metres of altitude on the Sierra de Meda. At the Cortes of Zamora in 1301, under Ferdinand IV of Castile, it was called the key to the kingdom of Galicia, and the king pledged not to hand it over to any lord. It lost around half its population in the last half of the 20th century through emigration, especially to the Americas in the 1960s. It is dominated by the fortress of Monterrei, raised above the vineyards of its denomination of origin; there the Missale Auriense, the first book printed in Galicia, was printed in 1494, and nearby stands the pre-Romanesque church of Santa María de Mixós.
Monument
The Torre da Homenaxe crowns the castle of Monterrei, in Ourense, built on a hillock overlooking the Támega river valley, at the meeting point of the roads to A Pobra de Trives and Ourense; the complex, declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), is considered by some authors to be the largest acropolis in Galicia. This square granite tower, twenty-two metres high, was built by Sancho Sánchez de Ulloa, first count of Monterrei, who inherited the estate in 1461 after almost twenty years of lawsuits against Francisco de Zúñiga; an inscription dates its completion to 1482. It retains an entrance via drawbridge, interior chimneys and a crenellated parapet with eight corner turrets.
Monument
Founded in 1391 by Gaspar de Zúñiga within the fortified enclosure, it has two floors and a Gothic doorway with an inverted angel on the keystone and an Annunciation carved on the jambs of the tympanum.
Monument
A transitional Romanesque-to-Gothic church built in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, with a timber-roofed nave and a ribbed-vaulted apse; its bell tower was added between 1660 and 1661 and it holds fourteenth-century paintings.
Monument
A pre-Romanesque church in the parish of Mixós, one of the few surviving early medieval remains in the Monterrei valley; it belongs to a concello of eleven parishes covering almost 119 square kilometres. Declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico in 1931 and today a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), it appears to have arisen in the shadow of an early monastery founded by Saint Martin of Dumio in the 6th century, although the present-day church, from the 9th century, reuses earlier materials and later came under the Benedictine monastery of Celanova. It is crossed by the Camino de Santiago, along the Vía de la Plata. The chancel, built in ashlar, retains three apses with horseshoe-arch windows, and the altar of the central nave rests on a Roman altar stone bearing an inscription dedicated to a pre-Christian goddess.
Nature
At 1,091 metres it is the highest point of the concello, in the Montes de Meda, which close off to the north a municipality divided between the wine-growing valley floor and the slopes of scrub and heath.
Activity
Denomination of origin extending through the valley of the Támega river, one of the five existing for wines in Galicia, with the wineries spread through the valley and the castle of Monterrei as a backdrop. The seal protects a little less than 500 hectares of vineyard in the concellos of Castrelo do Val, Monterrei, Oímbra, O Riós, Vilardevós and Verín, on the border with Portugal, although another 13,000 hectares of vines remain outside the denomination; its 24 wineries and 380 winegrowers produce around two million litres of qualified wine a year, with white varieties such as verdello, dona branca and verdello louro, and red ones such as mencía, bastardo and araúxa.
Curiosity
On 3 February 1494, copies of the Missale Auriense came off the presses set up within the precinct of Monterrei castle: a liturgical missal with the texts needed for Mass according to the Roman rite, printed by Gonzalo Rodríguez de la Passera and Xoán de Porras and considered the first book printed with movable type in Galicia. Two copies survive today: one on parchment, in the Cathedral Museum of Ourense, and another on paper, in the National Library of Spain. The castle complex has been a national monument since 3 June 1931.
Monument
Parish church of Albarellos, one of the eleven parishes of Monterrei; it stands in the floodplain of the Támega, at the foot of the hill crowned by the fortress that gives its name to the concello and to the valley.
Food and drink
Native white variety of the Monterrei valley, recovered by the designation of origin together with godello and treixadura; it yields wines of marked acidity in one of the warmest comarcas of Galicia.