Village
A Mezquita is a concello of fewer than a thousand inhabitants situated at the south-eastern tip of the province of Orense, in the comarca of Viana, bordering the province of Zamora to the east and north-east and the Portuguese district of Braganza to the south. Its mountainous terrain, with winters of constant frost that have given it the name Terra das Frieiras, reaches 1,640 metres near the Aguallal, already in Zamoran land, while the village itself sits at 989 metres. In the Middle Ages it was part of the lands of the counts of Monterrey and the Pimentel family of Benavente. Emigration was such that the descendants of the hamlet of Chaguazoso formed a colony in Santiago de Chile, where several hundred of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren live today.
Monument
A church raised in 1712 by the master builder Simón de Monasterio, with a single nave and a classical façade with Doric columns; inside, an altarpiece attributed to the sculptor José Ferreiro stands out.
Monument
A pazo house adjoining the Church of San Martiño, with a round-arched doorway decorated with balls and dated 1480, the year of its rebuilding under the lords of Láncara; it was enlarged in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Monument
An 18th-century Baroque parish church in the hamlet of O Pereiro, one of the first the Camino Sanabrés passes through after crossing the Portela da Canda and entering Galician territory.
Monument
An 18th-century parish church which preserves a Baroque altarpiece dated 1784; it stands in Santigoso, a hamlet overlooked by the remains of the fortified site known as Castelo Grande.
Monument
A church built in 1808 in the parish of A Esculqueira, which holds an altarpiece by the sculptor Xosé Ferreiro, one of the masters of the transition from Baroque to Neoclassical in Galician sculpture.
Monument
A parish church of the 17th and 18th centuries which preserves 16th-century paintings and a Neoclassical high altarpiece of the 19th; Manzalvos is among the hamlets that made up the royal domain with its capital at A Vilavella.
Monument
A church of the 17th and 18th centuries presided over by a Calvary painted above the high altar; from Cádavos starts the trail of some three and a half kilometres that climbs to the Fraga dos Tres Reinos.
Monument
A 17th-century parish church rebuilt in 1964 in Neoclassical forms; its dedication to Saint James recalls that these border hamlets were for centuries a corridor towards Compostela.
Monument
The parish church of the hamlet of Castromil, with an adjoining cemetery and a Neoclassical altarpiece of the 19th century; the place sits a step away from the border with the province of Zamora, at the eastern end of the municipality.
Monument
An 18th-century church of Neoclassical design which preserves a gilded Baroque altarpiece with Solomonic columns; A Vilavella was the capital of the royal domain that brought together Cádavos, A Esculqueira, Manzalvos, O Pereiro and Santigoso.
Monument
A chapel beside the cemetery of A Canda, right on the border with Castilla y León; it lies at the foot of the pass by which the Camino Sanabrés crosses into Galicia from the lands of Zamora.
Monument
A fortified site on the summit of Monte Castelo, above the hamlet of Santigoso, fitted out with a wooden platform that serves as a viewpoint over the valley and the border ranges.
Monument
A castro of some ten hectares dated between the 2nd century BC and the 1st century AD, the largest Iron Age enclosure documented in the municipality; the line of its defences can still be made out on the hillside.
Curiosity
A rock 1,025 metres high, part of the Serra de Marabón mountain system, at the point where the borders of the old medieval kingdoms of Galicia, León and Portugal once met, whence its name. It lies on the boundary between the parish of Cádavos, in the concello of A Mezquita, the Portuguese freguesia of Moimenta e Montouto, in Vinhais, and the town of Castromil, in the Zamora concello of Hermisende, and corresponds to boundary marker number 350 on the line with Portugal. Although the three medieval kingdoms disappeared centuries ago, the old name has remained unchanged, and the 1864 Treaty of Lisbon fixed the current Spanish-Portuguese border here. There is a presence of Iberian wolf in the area.
Curiosity
A spring beside the Penedo dos Tres Reinos whose use was agreed upon for the inhabitants of the three border territories; it is the end point of the trail that climbs up from the hamlet of Cádavos.
Curiosity
A traditional two-stone flour mill restored by the municipality, which preserves its horizontal wheel and its water channel; it documents the grinding of rye, the basis of the diet in the Terra das Frieiras.
Curiosity
In Santiago de Chile there lives a colony of close to four hundred descendants of people from the parish of Chaguazoso, a mark of the mass emigration that emptied these border hamlets during the 20th century.
Curiosity
The Portela da Canda is a mountain pass 1,262 metres high between the Segundeira range to the north and the Marabón range to the south, linking As Frieiras, in the province of Ourense, with Seabra, in that of Zamora, and through which the Camino Sanabrés enters Galicia from Zamora. For centuries it was an obligatory route for pilgrims, reapers, muleteers and merchants between Castile and the Galician kingdom, and a small stretch of the original ZA-106 road is still preserved, replaced in 1975 by the N-525 bypass between Padornelo and A Canda, which shortened the journey from 21 to 11.5 kilometres. Since 2003, the A-52 motorway between Ourense and Benavente has avoided the climb to the pass thanks to a 450-metre tunnel that bores through the Pico de Aguallal, in the Segundeira range.
Nature
The Pena Maseira is a special area of conservation of the Natura 2000 network covering 5,739 hectares in the south of the concellos of A Mezquita and A Gudiña, in the Ourense comarca of Viana, at the most south-easterly corner of Galicia; it borders the Portuguese Montesinho natural park to the south, in Bragança, and Seabra, already in Zamora province, to the east. Within the area lies the Penedo dos Tres Reis, a marker stone that marks the meeting point of the three territories. It is dominated by a landscape of scrubland and rocky outcrops, with herbaceous formations of mat-grass and active peat bogs, mixed woods of maple, ash and mountain elm, riverside alder groves and carballeiras of common oak and Pyrenean oak; it protects soutos of chestnut trees and is home, among other species, to the wolf and the roe deer.
Nature
The Penedo dos Tres Reinos, or Fraga dos Tres Reinos, is an elevation of 1025 metres that is part of the sierra de Marabón, taking its name from having been, in the Middle Ages, the border point between the kingdoms of Portugal, León and Galicia; today it lies at the meeting point between the Portuguese freguesia of Moimenta e Montouto, in the municipality of Vinhais, the parish of Cádavos, in A Mezquita, and the town of Castromil, in the Zamora municipality of Hermisende. Although the three medieval kingdoms that give the place its name no longer exist — Portugal became a republic and Galicia and León were incorporated into Spain — its name has been retained; the 1864 Treaty of Lisbon fixed the current border between Spain and Portugal in the area. There is a presence of Iberian wolf in its woods.
Nature
A monumental chestnut tree some twenty-five metres tall and close to five hundred years old, a survivor of the chestnut groves that for centuries sustained the municipality's farming and livestock economy.
Nature
A summit of 1,664 metres, the highest point of a municipality whose average altitude tops 800 metres and which for that reason bears the name Terra das Frieiras, where the frosts last for a good part of the year.
Nature
A small bathing spot laid out on the Veigas stream, beside the hamlet of Chaguazoso; it is the only stretch of river sand in a high mountain municipality at the south-eastern tip of Galicia.