Village
Agolada is a concello of around 2,200 inhabitants in the far northeast of Pontevedra, between the Ulla river, which forms the northern boundary and joins the Arnego at Brocos before the Portodemouros reservoir, and the Farelo mountain range, whose namesake peak, at 956 metres, is the highest point in the municipality. Administratively it belongs to Pontevedra, but ecclesiastically it comes under Lugo. Its name has been interpreted as deriving from the Latin Aqua Lata ('channelled water'), while the form Golada arose when the initial vowel was confused with the feminine article. The capital, which gives its name to the municipality, has 500 inhabitants. The concello holds a market on the 12th of every month, and at the Mourazos bridge it preserves an inscription from the year 862, one of the few early medieval Latin inscriptions in Galicia.
Monument
A 16th-century fortified house linked to the counts of Borraxeiros, one of the lineages that dominated these lands of the upper Ulla; it shares the municipality with other tower houses such as the Torre dos Vilar and the Casa de Quintela.
Monument
The parish church that gives its name to one of the largest parishes in the municipality, next to the fortified house of the counts of the same name, in a district where seventeen burial mounds have been catalogued around the Marcelín hillfort.
Nature
Mount Farelo, at 952.6 metres, is the highest point of the municipality of Agolada and one of the great vantage points of inland Galicia, with views reaching the Terra de Melide and the Ulla valley. Its south-western slope belongs to the parishes of Ventosa and As Trabancas, in Agolada, while the north-eastern one already falls within the parish of San Martiño de Amarante, in Antas de Ulla. It was formerly called monte Sumio, and its present name, Farelo, is a diminutive of Faro. Its slopes alternate heathland and forest replanting, and oral tradition preserves numerous sayings foretelling imminent rain when the mountain becomes covered in clouds, such as “pon o pucho o Farelo, auga prós eidos”.
Nature
The Ulla marks the whole northern boundary of the municipality and here separates the province of Pontevedra from that of A Coruña; its valley, deep-cut and wooded, gathers the water of the streams that come down from the slopes of Monte Farelo.
Curiosity
This gold Bronze Age set, made up of two bracelets and a torc, is probably dated between 1700 and 1600 BC and was found in 1920 near the castro de Goiás, in the parish of Ferreiroa, during works on the road from Lalín to Agolada, in a burial mound of which it is thought to have formed part of a grave good, in a municipality dotted with mámoas and castros. It has several parallels in Galicia, but outside it similar pieces have only been found in French Brittany, which is interpreted as evidence of Atlantic relations between the Galician population and the Bretons at the beginning of the Bronze Age. It is kept in the Museo de Pontevedra and is one of the most valuable pieces of prehistoric goldwork in the province.
Curiosity
Next to a medieval bridge at the place called Mourazos an inscription is preserved that points to the year 862, one of the oldest early medieval epigraphic testimonies catalogued in the Deza comarca.
Activity
On the 12th of every month the town revives its fair in the pendellos, a market of livestock and country produce that brings together farmers and dealers from across the comarca and keeps alive the original use of a fairground of traditional stone and wood architecture. In August a medieval fair and a craft market in the historic centre are added to it.
Monument
The pazo de Borraxeiros stands on an outeiro next to the sierra do Farelo, in the parish of San Cristovo de Borraxeiros, municipality of Agolada. It is a 17th-century manor house, rebuilt in the time of Philip II with stone from an old castle belonging to the Salgado family, destroyed during the revolt of the Irmandiños, which is why it is also known as the Pazo dos Salgado. It belonged to Lope Sánchez de Ulloa, first Count of Altamira. It has a quadrangular plan with an inner courtyard, a main façade flanked by two semicircular battlemented towers of medieval origin, and on the east side it preserves a moat filled with water. In the presbytery of the adjoining Romanesque church is kept the praying statue of Count Antonio Salgado Gundín.
Monument
Os Pendellos de Agolada are a group of stalls and stone-and-wood sheds built in 1788 on the fairground, with masonry counters under a roof, which served the fair traders as stalls and storehouses; they were declared a Conjunto Histórico-Artístico (a former Spanish heritage protection category for historic ensembles) in 1985, and in 1990 the Xunta de Galicia and the town council undertook a project to clean and restore some of them. It is one of the best-preserved traditional fairgrounds in Galicia: for more than two centuries it hosted one of the most crowded fairs of the interior, and it remains in use for the fair held on the 12th of every month, besides hosting a craft fair in July and a medieval fair in August today.
Curiosity
A tomb cut into a single block of stone with two adjoining cavities, situated in the place of A Rateira, in the parish of Ventosa; it is attributed to an early medieval burial of double occupation.
Historical milestone
The tower of the counts of Altamira at Borraxeiros is razed during the rising of the irmandiños against the nobility, between 1467 and 1469; over its remains was raised in the 17th century the pazo (Galician manor house) that survives today.
Food and drink
A show at the beginning of December in the concello's square devoted to the suckling calf and the home-raised pig, with tastings and sale of sausages and slaughter cuts from the surrounding farms.