Village
Oia is a coastal concello of about 3,000 inhabitants on the southern coast of Pontevedra, within the Baixo Miño comarca. Its history revolves around the monastery of Santa María, founded as an abbey in 1132, in the 12th century, by Alfonso VII, which adopted the Cistercian reform in 1185 and came under the abbey of Clairvaux. Behind it rises the serra da Groba, a range descending from the Alto da Groba, 662 metres high, where groups of horses graze freely, rounded up each year in the rapa das bestas. The coastline, very straight, is due to a geological fault that has exposed triangular facets like the one seen behind the church's bell tower. The municipality also holds remains of castros and of a Roman villa at Viladesuso, predating the monastery.
Monument
The monastery of Santa María de Oia stands by the sea, on the narrow strip of flat land left by the da Groba massif, in the seat of the concello. The only Cistercian monastery in Galicia built right on the edge of the Atlantic, it had a long history between 1137 and 1835: founded in the 12th century, in 1137, by the merger of three Benedictine communities, it joined the Cistercian order in 1185 and became the monastic community of greatest socio-economic weight in the diocese of Tui, with the favour of successive kings, from Alfonso VII to Sancho IV. It combines a medieval church and a baroque facade, and was disentailed and sold to private owners in 1835. Today the former monastic church remains in use as a parish church, while the rest of the conventual buildings remain in private hands.
Nature
The serra da Groba is a coastal granite massif of some 50 km2 that runs north-south through the concellos of Baiona, Oia and O Rosal, separating the sea from the Minho valley, and reaches its highest point at the Alto da Groba, at 662 metres. It is home to the largest concentration of free-roaming Galician-breed horses, which graze among gorse, heathland and the peat bogs where the rare herba das malladas grows. Petroglyphs abound in its surroundings, with reticulated, spiral and labyrinth shapes, among them those of Auga dos Cebros, in the parish of Oia, which depict boats probably of Phoenician origin; navicular muíños (boat-shaped mills) and numerous mámoas (burial mounds) are also preserved.
Nature
A series of natural pools carved out by the river in the parish of Mougás, strung together by small waterfalls and surrounded by riverside woodland; they are one of the most popular freshwater bathing spots in the Baixo Miño.
Nature
An open, rocky coast where the coastal platform drops to the Atlantic with almost no beaches, with granite boulders battered by the swell; the coastal Camino Portugués runs along it among hillforts and rock carvings.
Curiosity
The horses that roam free on the municipality's hills form herds led by a stallion and are only rounded up once a year to be marked and have their manes cut; the municipality preserves several stone curros.
Activity
On the first Sunday in June local people bring some five hundred horses down from the hills into an enclosure of three granite pens to shear and mark them by hand; the Mougás curro repeats the scene the following Sunday.
Activity
A waymarked eighteen-kilometre route that runs parallel to the sea through the municipality's four coastal parishes, Mougás, Viladesuso, Pedornes and Santa María, linking hillforts, petroglyphs and viewpoints over the Atlantic.
Monument
The parish church of Burgueira, on the inland slope of Oia, one of the six parishes of the concello; it stands among the terraces that climb the hillside of the sierra of the Groba towards the Atlantic.
Nature
A summit of 610 metres, the greatest altitude of the concello of Oia, at the western end of the sierra of the Groba; from it one commands the whole coastal shelf and, on clear days, the Cíes islands to the north.
Nature
A short, steeply sloping course that comes down from the sierra of the Groba to the Atlantic crossing the municipal district of Oia; together with the Tamuxe it drains the seaward slope of this stretch of coast.
Nature
A castro settlement of the parish of Mougás in which a Roman altar appeared, proof of the survival of the settlement in imperial times; it shares its concello with the castros of Viladesuso, das Chans and Castelo Fariña.
Activity
A pilgrimage festival held every 20 January at the hermitage of San Sebastián, in the place of O Arrabal; it opens the festive calendar of Oia in the depths of winter, when the sea beats against the Cistercian monastery.
Activity
A seafaring pilgrimage festival held in Oia on the Monday following Pentecost, with a procession down to the shore of the Atlantic; it is one of the three great devotional events of the concello together with San Sebastián and the physician saints.
Historical milestone
Alfonso VII endowed, around the mid-12th century, a monastic community on the coast of Oia that joined the Cistercian Order in 1185; the monastery came to control much of the coastline and to defend it with cannons against corsairs.
Food and drink
The rubia gallega, a native cattle breed and the most characteristic of Galicia, with blond hair in different shades, makes up around eighty percent of the herd in Oia, raised on the communal hills of the sierra de la Groba; its meat is protected under the protected geographical indication Ternera Gallega. It is used for meat production and was formerly also used as a working animal, and although it is most abundant in Lugo and A Coruña, it is present throughout Galicia and in other regions and countries of Europe and South America. Over the centuries, farmers selected its best qualities until its suitability for meat came to prevail over its suitability for milk and draught work, turning it into a genuine meat larder for the rest of Spain from the late 19th century onward.