Logbook · 10 places

What to see and do in Vila de Cruces

What to see and do in Vila de Cruces (Deza, Pontevedra): 10 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 3 Monuments · 2 Nature · 1 Activities · 1 Curiosities · 2 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Vila de Cruces

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Spain › Galicia › Pontevedra › Deza › Vila de Cruces

What to see and do in Vila de Cruces

Vila de Cruces
Village
Vila de Cruces is a concello in the Deza area, in the province of Pontevedra, with around 5,000 inhabitants spread across twenty-eight parishes over undulating terrain in the Ulla basin. It was called Carbia until 1944, when the town council opened a new headquarters in the present-day capital and adopted its name; its residents are known, in Galician, as crucés or carbiao. The patron saint, Our Lady of Piety, is celebrated on the weekend following 4 August, coinciding with the Rali de Carretillas, and throughout the year further food festivals are added: chestnuts in November, chorizo in February, and free-range chicken in May. It preserves the megalithic necropolis of Oirós, excavated in 1973, and a private astronomical observatory, now abandoned.
Megalithic necropolis of Oirós
Monument
A group of more than fifteen burial mounds excavated in 1973 and dated to around the year 2300 BC, one of the largest Neolithic funerary concentrations in the interior of the province of Pontevedra.
Church of Nosa Señora da Piedade
Monument
A church dedicated to the municipality's patron saint in the parish of As Cruces, accompanied by a stone cruceiro; the main festival that marks the town's calendar is held around it in August.
Bank of the Ulla in Vila de Cruces
Nature
The stretch of the river that skirts the municipality to the north among riverside woods and deep-cut meanders; its banks preserve mills and riverside paths that link several of the municipality's twenty-eight parishes.
Generals of the Vila de Cruces Carnival
Curiosity
At the municipality's carnival the xenerais still come out, characters in military uniform and feathered hats who challenge one another in atranques of improvised verse as they go round the hamlets of the Ulla valley.
Festival of o Galo de Curral
Activity
Held in May, it champions the free-range cockerel raised in the municipality's hamlets, which even has a monument of its own in the town; it is one of the fixed gastronomic dates in the calendar of the Deza comarca.
Church of San Salvador de Camanzo
Monument
The church of San Salvador de Camanzo, built in 1166, was the church of a Benedictine monastery founded in the 10th century by Count don Gonzalo and his wife doña Tareixa, to which Queen doña Urraca left several bequests in her will; it disappeared when it was absorbed into San Paio de Antealtares in 1516. With a basilical plan, three naves and three apses, it preserves Romanesque arcades towards the old chapter house, a cloister unusual in Galicia, where later cloisters predominated. The arches near the chancel are pointed, a sign of a Gothic reform, and the capitals show geometric and floral ornamentation; the main portal displays a double archivolt and a tympanum with a carved Agnus Dei. Today the temple is in a lamentable state and the chapter house is used as a storeroom.
Reservoir of Portodemouros
Nature
A large reservoir on the river Ulla, in the geographical centre of Galicia, forming a long arm of water between the provinces of Pontevedra and La Coruña, between the concellos of Vila de Cruces and Arzúa. Its dam, of rockfill and straight-plan design, was built between 1964 and 1967 and inaugurated in 1968, standing 90 metres above the riverbed with a capacity of 297 cubic hectometres; an underground power plant fed by two turbo-alternators generates 95 megawatts of power. Its heavily indented shores serve as a refuge for otters and waterfowl and as a fishing area, and in recent years the reservoir has also become the axis of the comarca's tourist development, with a sailing club nearby.
Camanzo comes under Compostela's jurisdiction
Historical milestone
Under the reign of Urraca I of León the monastery of San Salvador de Camanzo is incorporated into the see of Santiago de Compostela, a situation that lasted until the beginning of the sixteenth century.
The excavation of the necropolis of Oirós
Historical milestone
The campaign carried out in 1973 on this megalithic necropolis of more than fifteen mámoas is considered the first excavation of contemporary Galician archaeology, and it marked a change of method in the discipline.