Village
Vilagarcía de Arousa is a port city of about 38,000 inhabitants at the head of the Ría de Arousa, in the province of Pontevedra, and the tenth most populous municipality in Galicia. Its origin is linked to the old port of Carril, active since the mid-19th century and with such commercial vigour that it came to host several foreign consulates; in 1873 it also became the first Galician town connected by railway to Santiago de Compostela. Today the port remains key for exports, fishing and leisure, and the city hosts FEXDEGA, one of the largest exhibition grounds in Galicia. Born in 1913 from the merger of three concellos, the island of Cortegada extends off its coast, and every 16 August the Festa da Auga floods the streets with hosepipes.
Nature
The island of Cortegada, covering 54 hectares, lies in the Arousa estuary, near the mouth of the river Ulla and facing the coast of Carril, within the municipality of Vilagarcía de Arousa; it is the largest in the Cortegada archipelago, which also includes the Malveiras or Briñas islands, and forms part of the Atlantic Islands National Park. It is almost a tidal island: at low tide it joins the mainland via the fish farms and can be crossed on foot. It has a few beaches and two small hills a little over twenty metres high, covered in abundant vegetation, among which stands out the largest laurel forest on the Iberian Peninsula, along with pine woods and other species. The island was ceded to Alfonso XIII in 1910, was incorporated into the national park in 2002 and returned to public hands in 2007.
Monument
A manor house located at Rubiáns de Arriba, very close to Vilagarcía de Arousa, documented since 1411, when it was inhabited by the Caamaño family, founders of the town in 1441. Its origin is a 12th-century tower-fortress, converted into a pazo in the 15th century and remodelled in the 18th by a French architect; it preserves the coats of arms of García de Caamaño and Mendoza. It has a 70-hectare estate with albariño vineyards protected by the D.O. (denomination of origin) Rías Baixas and a 15th-century winery still in use. Its historic garden, with more than eight hundred varieties of century-old camellias included in Galicia's Camellia Route, was recognised as a Garden of International Excellence in 2014. It is privately owned but open to visitors, with guided tours of the pazo, the wineries and the gardens.
Monument
A 12th-century Romanesque church in Vilaxoán, heir to a double monastery mentioned in the 10th century; it keeps the vaults of the nave and the chancel intact, something uncommon in rural Galician Romanesque.
Nature
A mountain lying between the municipalities of Caldas de Reis, Catoira and Vilagarcía de Arousa, reaching 641 metres above sea level at the point known as Alto da Meda, and separating the Salnés area from the Ulla valley. From its western slope Vilagarcía de Arousa and the Arousa estuary are visible, with their islands and bateas. Its hillsides, richly vegetated thanks to annual rainfall of around 1,500 millimetres, preserve burial mounds probably dating from the Neolithic - the largest on the Fonte Loureiro spur - and a castrexo settlement on the Gaiba peak. The mountain is the starting point for several hiking routes, although it has suffered major forest fires, such as those of 2005 and 2006.
Nature
An urban stretch of sand running alongside Vilagarcía's seafront promenade, facing the island of Cortegada; its name recalls the role of the nearby port of Carril as the sea outlet for Santiago de Compostela. Also known as praia da Cuncha, it lies between the town centre and the hamlet of O Carril, and is more than two kilometres long, run along its full length by a seafront promenade. It is built up, with buildings of up to ten storeys right on the beach on Rosalía de Castro avenue. For a time the red flag flew here because of pollution from the nearby port.
Curiosity
The golden carpet-shell clam raised in the beds of Carril, an independent town until 1913, supports hundreds of shellfish-gathering families; its festival, organised by the parish's fishermen's guild to promote the mollusc, began in 1992 and is held in the second half of August, though it could not be celebrated in 2000 and 2001 due to a clam shortage caused by bad weather. In its most recent editions around 5,000 portions have been served, close to 1,800 kilos, of babosa clam, the native species, along with golden and Japanese clams, accompanied by albariño wine.
Activity
Every 16 August, the feast day of Saint Roch, locals and visitors soak one another with buckets and hoses through the streets of the town centre, in a celebration that arose in the late 1970s. The festival begins with the moving of the patron saint's image from the parish church of Santa Eulalia de Arealonga to the chapel of San Roque, at which point pilgrims ask residents for water to cool off; Civil Protection teams often join in by spraying water from hoses. The previous night, known as the Eve of the Water Festival, also has its own celebration. Despite the controversy raised by the amount of water used, the festival has been declared of tourist interest and gains followers every year.
Nature
Group of islets off the coast of Vilagarcía de Arousa that forms part of the Cortegada archipelago, included in the Atlantic Islands National Park, and which, together with the island of Cortegada, makes up the inner archipelago of the ría de Arousa. It comprises two small islands, Malveira Grande and Malveira Pequena, and the islet of As Cabras, with 5.5 hectares in total; the larger one, sandy to the south and rocky to the north, is covered in gorse, ferns, wild fig trees and laurels, and crowned by an old stone cross, while on the smaller one only gorse grows. Covered in scrub and frequented by seabirds, this sub-archipelago is the subject of a well-known popular cantiga that places it between Rianxo and Vilagarcía.
Nature
The castro of Alobre, right in the middle of the urban centre of Vilagarcía de Arousa, is a fortified Iron Age settlement that the Romans reused after the castrexa culture, and it is considered one of the most important coastal castros of the ría de Arousa. Set on a granite promontory near Valdés Bermejo park and the Pazo de Vista Alegre, it covers an area of roughly 1.5 hectares divided into three enclosures of different heights, with an upper enclosure or croa of oval plan, and preserves remains of circular and rectangular structures, rubble-stone walls and a perimeter wall 110 metres long. It is one of the four castros of Vilagarcía, along with those of O Carril, Castroagudín and Monte Lobeira, and its name lives on in the town's urban toponymy.