Village
Moaña is a concello of about 19,300 inhabitants in the southern part of the Morrazo peninsula, overlooking the ría de Vigo, with its mussel rafts as a mark of identity. Its history has been tied to the sea: alongside small-scale farming and livestock raising, fishing and its related industries have always been the main activity, and in the first half of the 20th century the CNT had a very significant working-class presence here. Off its coast, in the Rande strait, was fought the naval battle in which the Hispano-French fleet lost to the English and Dutch the largest gold shipment to come from the New World. It preserves the 12th-century Romanesque church of San Martiño, the burial mound of Chan da Arquiña, and a route linking 31 restored mills.
Monument
The church of San Martiño, in the parish of the same name in the municipality of Moaña, was completed in 1197 and partly rebuilt in 1771 with Baroque additions, preserving the doorway and other original elements of the Romanesque church. Beside it stand the remains of an old castro, and in 2010 a will belonging to a parish resident, written in Galician in 1466, came to light. It forms part of a heritage complex that includes the 16th-century rectory house, the Casa das Señoritas of 1866 and three cruceiros (wayside crosses) from the 12th to the 16th centuries. The festivities of San Martiño, the parish's patron saint, were declared of tourist interest in Galicia in 2018.
Monument
A 13th-century church in the passage from late Romanesque to Gothic, raised almost at the water's edge in the parish of Tirán, facing the ría de Vigo; it is one of the oldest churches preserved in the municipality.
Nature
A passage grave more than five thousand years old on the climb up to Monte Faro de Domaio, with eleven orthostats in the chamber and five in the passage; it was excavated in 1953 and yielded bell beaker pottery and polished axes.
Monument
An 18th-century manor house with its own chapel, one of the few examples of pazo architecture preserved in the municipality, surrounded by land that drops towards the shore of the ría de Vigo.
Nature
Monte Faro de Domaio, at 636 metres, is the highest point of the Sierra del Morrazo (Pontevedra) and overlooks both the Ría de Vigo and the Ría de Pontevedra, which has made it a telecommunications hub, with a road up to the summit and numerous antennas. It lies in the municipality of Moaña, above the parish of Domaio. On its slopes is the Chan da Arquiña recreation area, which surrounds a burial mound (mámoa) more than 5,000 years old, with an eleven-stone polygonal chamber and a five-stone passage, where a complete funerary assemblage was found; its terraces also preserve petroglyphs and communal uses of the mountain. The terrain is granite, with Atlantic woodland of oaks and chestnuts giving way to eucalyptus and pines, and rivers rise here that flow down to the Ría de Vigo and the Ría de Pontevedra.
Nature
An easily accessible urban beach in the parish of Tirán, right after the port of Moaña, awarded the blue flag. It is about 150 metres long and is bordered on its right by the Punta de Cortés. The seafront promenade that extends from it runs along the northern shore of the Ría de Vigo, with the mussel rafts (bateas) and the Rande bridge always in view.
Curiosity
Along some six kilometres of the watercourse, thirty-one flour mills have been restored and now form the backbone of a walking route, a testimony to the peasant economy that lived alongside fishing in the Morrazo.
Curiosity
Off Moaña dozens of eucalyptus platforms are lined up, from which hang hundreds of growing ropes; the mussels raised on them sustain much of the municipality's maritime economy.
Activity
A food festival in early August at which thousands of kilos of mussels freshly harvested from the rafts of the ría de Vigo are served, accompanied by brass bands and an opening address by a figure from the sector.
Activity
The Festival Intercéltico do Morrazo was born on 15 August 1985, as the I Festival Nocturno Celta do Morrazo, on the initiative of the Semente Nova bagpipe school of Moaña, to raise funds and travel to the interceltic festival of Lorient, in Brittany. It seeks to promote traditional folklore of Celtiberian roots alongside new trends in the genre, and in 2003 it was declared of Community interest by the European Union and of cultural interest by the Ministry of Culture. It grew from a weekend event organised by the bagpipe school into a ten-day municipal event with theatre and workshops, adding Breton, Scottish and Irish groups; always held in public spaces, it is today a fixture of European folk music in Moaña.
Nature
The castro of Montealegre, a fortified settlement in the parish of Domaio (Moaña), rises on a knoll by the sea, near the Rande strait, and is the most notable in the concello, with signs of Romanization, along with those of das Cidades (Meira) and Os Remedios (Tirán). It was one of the first castros excavated and scientifically published in Galicia, known since the 20th century. An emergency excavation in 2003-2004, prompted by the Morrazo corridor, brought to light movable remains in excellent condition, with pottery and fibulae valuable for understanding long-distance trade between the castro society of the Rías Baixas and Mediterranean peoples. It preserves walls, ditches and terracing to the north, petroglyphs declared a bien de interés cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 1974, and a spring-mine, A Cova da Londra.
Nature
At this site in Domaio the presence of Bell Beaker pottery outside a funerary context was documented for the first time in Galicia, a key find for understanding the prehistoric settlement of O Morrazo.
Curiosity
A set of Bronze Age rock carvings located in the parish of Meira, in the concello of Moaña, at about 230 meters above sea level, on the slope of Monte da Borna that descends to the beach of the same name, facing the mouth of the Vigo estuary. It is part of the municipality's dense rock-art network, with other sites also at Montealegre, As Cidades, Pozo Garrido, A Escada and Os Remedios. The set, 12 by 25 meters, is spread over two panels: the higher one gathers about 50 cross-shaped or anthropomorphic motifs, and the second shows crosses and inverted-U-shaped designs, one with a small hollow interpreted as a possible boat. Oral tradition knows it as the Pegada de San Pedro (Saint Peter's footprint), after the marks the saint's horse is said to have left when it leapt to the other shore of the estuary.
Historical milestone
The combat between the Anglo-Dutch fleet and the Spanish-French galleons in the strait of Rande, on 23 October 1702, ended with the sacking of the Moaña parishes of Domaio, Meira and Tirán by the English.
Historical milestone
Until 1836 these parishes did not form their own municipality and their history was merged with that of the Morrazo as a whole; the new administrative division gave standing to a town turned towards the sea.
Curiosity
A group of public stone fountain and washing place where the women washed the clothes on their knees over the sloping slabs, one of the spaces of female sociability preserved in the parishes of the concello.
Food and drink
A good part of the raft-farming fleet of the estuary moors in this port: the mussel is raised hanging from ropes for a year and a half and is eaten steamed, marinated or as a filling for empanada.
Historical milestone
While the Anglo-Dutch squadron forced the inlet of Rande in 1702 and destroyed the Indies fleet, the landed troops fell upon the Morrazo shore: the parishes of Domaio, Meira and Tirán were left sacked.