Village
Lalín is a municipality in the province of Pontevedra, in Galicia, capital of the Deza district, with 48 parishes and around 20,000 inhabitants; it is the fourth-largest concello in Galicia by area. Its name is already documented in the 10th century, in reference to the monastery of San Martín, in what is now Lalín de Arriba, and to the lands worked by the settler Lalino, later inherited by the counts of Deza; the district, as the Comitatus Dezensis, goes back to the Second Council of Braga in the year 572. With a strong textile industry, it celebrates the Feira do Cocido on the Sunday before Carnival, and on its land grows the Fraga de Catasós, an oak wood declared a natural monument in 2000.
Monument
A parish church whose origin lies in a monastery documented around the year 980, from which the settlement's history begins; the present temple preserves the memory of that early medieval foundation, somewhat set apart from the centre of the town, at the place called Lalín de Arriba. It is a twelfth-century Romanesque church, with a single-nave plan and a rectangular apse, which originally served a monastery founded around 980 by the bishop of Mondoñedo, Arias Peláez, as recorded in the will of his niece Adosinda, dated 1019. In the early twentieth century, when the new church of Santa María das Dores was built in the centre of Lalín, San Martiño came close to being demolished because of its remote location, but the opposition of local residents prevented it: in 1905, eight parishioners bought it from the diocese of Lugo.
Monument
The Quiroga family's manor house, where in 1868 José Quiroga married the writer Emilia Pardo Bazán; the complex is still one of the landmarks of civil architecture in the municipality, in the heart of the Deza valley.
Monument
A stone bridge with two semicircular arches built around the year 970, one of the oldest documented medieval crossings in the municipality; its fabric is still in service on a country road in the Deza valley.
Monument
A memorial to the Lalín-born aviator Joaquín Loriga Taboada (Lalín, 1895 - Cuatro Vientos, 1927), one of the pilots of the 1926 Madrid-Manila air raid carried out by the Escuadrilla Elcano; his figure presides over a public space in the town beside the statue of the astronomer Ramón María Aller. Born in the parish of San Martiño de Prado, into a family with a military tradition, he trained at the Artillery Academy of Segovia and joined military aviation in 1921, distinguishing himself in the Rif War, where he received the Medalla Militar. On 5 April 1926 he set off from Cuatro Vientos together with Captains Esteve and Gallarza, each in a Breguet XIX; the 18,900 kilometres of the route were covered in 33 days and ended with a mass welcome in Manila.
Nature
A wood of four and a half hectares declared a natural monument in the year 2000, with centuries-old chestnuts up to thirty metres tall and five metres in girth, held to be the tallest in Europe, mixed with oaks.
Nature
The Deza river, which gives its name to the comarca, rises in the Sierra del Testeiro, in the parish of Zobra (Lalín, Pontevedra), from the union of the Candosa and Trasdomonte streams, and runs 59.4 kilometres before flowing into the Ulla, with a basin of 551 km² and an average flow of 18.6 m³/s at its mouth; its main tributaries are the Asneiro and Toja rivers. As it crosses the municipality it runs through a valley enclosed between riverside woods and old mills, and its pools and the riverside forest that accompanies it support otters and trout until it meets the Ulla.
Curiosity
A sculpture by the artist Acisclo Manzano installed in the town as an allegory of the valley and its river; it has become one of the most reproduced images of Lalín's public space and a symbol of the municipality.
Monument
It bears the name of the astronomer and mathematician born in the municipality in 1878, who promoted the observatory of the Universidade de Santiago; it brings together ethnographic, archaeological and artistic collections linked to the Deza valley. Ramón María Aller Ulloa was born at the pazo de Filgueiroa, in Donramiro (Lalín), and was a priest, university professor and honorary canon of the cathedral of Santiago; a polyglot, he came to master ten languages and was a full academician of the Real Academia Galega and a corresponding member of the Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. He died in his native Lalín in 1966, at the age of eighty-eight.
Activity
The Feira do Cocido de Lalín, the town's great gastronomic gathering on the Sunday before Entroido, was born in 1968 on the initiative of mayor Luis González Taboada as a way of promoting the products of the Deza comarca among its six municipalities; the first edition was held in 1969. Declared Fiesta de Interés Turístico de Galicia (official tourism recognition) in 1999, Nacional in 2010 and Internacional in 2020, it was the first Spanish gastronomic festival to achieve this last recognition. It brings together thousands of diners around Galician cocido, with a parallel programme, the Mes del Cocido, and an opening address given by figures such as Álvaro Cunqueiro or Celso Emilio Ferreiro.
Activity
Held around 23 and 24 June in the parish of Losón, it is one of the largest healing pilgrimage festivals in Galicia, with a night vigil and devotees arriving from all over the region.
Monument
Manor house at the place of Liñares, parish of Prado, commissioned in the late 17th century by Álvaro Núñez Taboada, of the Casa de Bendoiro, which enjoyed its greatest splendour in the 19th and 20th centuries. The aviator Joaquín Loriga was born and raised there, godson of the last Taboada to own it, and it was frequented by Emilia Pardo Bazán, a friend of the family, who called the pazo the “Palacio del Recuerdo”. In baroque style with a rectangular ashlar plan, its rear gallery of five semicircular arches stands out, bearing the coats of arms of the Mosquera, Churruchaos, López de Lemos and Taboada families. Acquired by the Lalín town council in 2002 and declared a bien de interés cultural in 2009, it was restored and today houses the toy and puppet museum and a centre for the management of archaeological knowledge.
Nature
A grove of chestnuts and oaks protected as a natural monument, in which some specimens exceed thirty metres and are considered among the tallest chestnuts in Europe; the undergrowth preserves ferns and hollies.
Curiosity
A group of mámoas spread over the plateau of Alperiz, some with the orthostat chamber still visible. They form one of the most numerous prehistoric funerary complexes of the interior of the province of Pontevedra.
Activity
A recreational space around the provincial estate of Mouriscade, with groves, paths and picnic areas, used as the starting point for walks through the rural surroundings of the north of the concello.
Historical milestone
The pilot born in Lalín takes part in 1926 in the air crossing that linked Madrid with Manila in three Breguet aircraft, one of the great feats of interwar Spanish aviation; he would die in an accident a year later.
Nature
Oak and chestnut wood declared a natural monument in the year 2000, with chestnut trees of exceptional stature that are among the tallest in Europe. It is the most protected singular forest in the Deza region. Also called the carballeira or souto de Quiroga, it covers about 4.5 hectares some 4 kilometres from Lalín, alongside the N-525 between Santiago and Ourense; oaks dominate the whole, but it stands out above all for its centuries-old chestnut trees, some up to five metres in circumference and more than thirty in height. It is home to protected species such as the spring snowflake, endemic to Galicia and northern Portugal, and the stag beetle. A well-signposted, short and easy riverside walk allows it to be toured.
Food and drink
On the Sunday before carnival, the town serves thousands of portions of cocido gallego: cachucha, lacón, chorizo, grelos, potato and chickpeas, all from the pig slaughtered at the matanza. It is the largest gastronomic event in inland Pontevedra. The festival was born in 1968 on the initiative of mayor Luis González Taboada and the six municipalities of the Deza, to give commercial outlet to their typical products, and was first held in 1969. It was declared Fiesta de Interés Turístico de Galicia in 1999, Nacional in 2010 and Internacional in 2020, the first gastronomic festival in Spain to achieve that recognition. Since 1975 each edition has had its own poster signed by an artist, starting with the Lalín-born painter Laxeiro, and the opening speech has been given by figures such as Álvaro Cunqueiro or Eduardo Punset.