Village
A Estrada is a town of around 20,000 inhabitants in Tabeirós-Terra de Montes, in Pontevedra, spread across 51 parishes dotted with pazos such as that of Oca; it grew up at the crossing of two roads to Santiago, one from Tierra de Montes, Orense and Portugal, and the other from the Deza and the Galician interior towards the coast. The jurisdiction of Tabeirós, from which it originates, dates back to the Suebi king Miro, in the 6th century, and in the 12th century it passed into the possession of the Compostela see following an exchange between Archbishop Gelmírez and Alfonso VII of León; the municipality and the judicial district were created in 1840. In its parish of Sabucedo, a rapa das bestas is held every July, in which the aloitadores wrestle the wild horses by hand. With 20,112 inhabitants (INE 2025), it is the capital of its judicial district.
Monument
A Baroque complex built between the 17th and 18th centuries on a medieval fortress, in the parish of Santo Estevo de Oca, near the confluence of the Boo and Mao rivers, known as the Galician Versailles. The manor house, commissioned by Fernando Gayoso Arias Ozores, 7th Count of Amarante, is Baroque, although the origin of the pazo dates back to the 13th century; the neighbouring church of San Antonio de Padua was built between 1731 and 1752, possibly the work of Manuel de los Mártires. In the 19th century the garden was expanded with François Viet, gardener of Madrid's Campo del Moro: today it covers eight hectares with ponds, bridges, box hedges, centuries-old camellias and a carved stone boat. It was declared a monument on 15 January 1982 and has belonged since 1978 to the Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli.
Monument
Square-plan tower of the twelfth century, the only remnant of the castle demolished by the Irmandiños in the fifteenth century, after having been used in those wars; two centuries later a pazo was attached to it, today in ruins. Declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), it has figured since 2016 on the Red List (Lista Vermella) of heritage at risk.
Monument
The church of the largest parish in the municipality, in an open mountain valley; it keeps a Romanesque apse reckoned among the best of its kind in Galicia, and the existence of the place is documented as early as the 9th century.
Monument
A parish church of very pure Romanesque lines, restored in recent years and set on a height with wide views over the valley; it forms part of the second of the Romanesque routes signposted by the municipality.
Monument
A church that strongly keeps its 12th-century Romanesque character, with its decorated doorways surviving almost intact; it presides over a parish that also holds the sulphurous springs known as O Bañiño.
Monument
Church of the parish of Santo André de Vea, in the concello of A Estrada, which preserves from the Romanesque period two corbels and a large buttress reused from an earlier building. In the adjoining cemetery stands an old cruceiro dated 1625. An altar from a period prior to the construction of the current building adds to these remains of the original temple.
Monument
A historic bridge over the River Liñares, also known as the Ponte Vella de Liñares; it is one of the oldest stone crossings the municipality keeps over the river that gives its name to the valley and to the pazo nearby.
Monument
A stone aqueduct some two hundred and fifty years old that still carries irrigation water across the land; it is considered the only one of its kind still working in the whole of Galicia.
Nature
A pre-Roman fortified settlement set on a height that makes use of the valley's natural defences, in the parish of Callobre; nearby the river also forms a small waterfall amid riverside woodland.
Monument
A sanctuary raised in the 18th century in the parish of Requián, one of the most notable places of devotion in the municipality, which keeps inside a remarkable collection of Baroque religious art.
Monument
By the beginning of the 16th century there was already at Preguecido, in the parish of Aguións, a house and tower of very fine build with two shields bearing the arms of the Rioboo, the Villardefrancos and the Soutomaior families.
Monument
The architectural ensemble of the parish of Ribela is presided over by an hórreo that ranks among the longest in Galicia, a fine example of the farm architecture of a municipality divided into fifty-one parishes.
Nature
The gardens of the Pazo de Oca extend through the parish of Santo Estevo de Oca, in the valley of the río Ulla, about thirty kilometres southeast of Santiago de Compostela. The pazo, a great Baroque manor house built between the 17th and 18th centuries, is known as the Xeralife of the North or the Galician Versailles for the beauty of its water gardens, with connected ponds, bridges and specimens of Japanese cedar and reticulated camellias. The eight hectares of garden have been open to the public all year round since 1953, when the Duchess of Medinaceli, Victoria Eugenia Fernández de Córdoba, heir to the pazo, decided on its permanent opening; in 1978 the same duchess created the Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli, to which she transferred the property to guarantee its preservation.
Nature
A gorge cut by the water in which several waterfalls follow one another, hemmed in between rock walls and riverside woodland; it is one of the most spectacular and least visited corners of the municipality.
Nature
A waterfall on the River Curantes in the parish of the same name, set in a wooded stretch reached by local paths; further down the same channel forms another waterfall near the hillfort of Callobre.
Nature
A river beach and recreational area on the bank of the River Ulla, in the parish of Berres, on the same stretch of river as the salmon fisheries that gave the comarca its gastronomic fame.
Nature
Sulphurous springs that rise in the parish of Loimil and were traditionally used by local people for their medicinal properties, a short distance from the Romanesque church that presides over the place.
Nature
The couto of Ximonde, one of the most important salmon reserves in Galicia, stretches 700 metres along the río Ulla between the parishes of San Miguel de Sarandón, in Vedra, and Paradela, in A Estrada, downstream from the Ximonde dam. It has a fishermen's refuge, a river interpretation centre and an ichthyological station built on an old mill, from which work is carried out to restock the waters with salmon, sea trout, trout and river mussel. Nearby, a 55-metre suspension bridge links the concellos of Vedra and A Estrada, and with them the provinces of A Coruña and Pontevedra. Historically linked to the Pazo de Ximonde, it hosts every May the international salmon fishing competition, as part of A Estrada's salmon festival.
Curiosity
The ruins of a paper mill that drew on the force of the river's water, evidence of the small rural industry that once flourished in these parishes before the great emigration of the 20th century.
Curiosity
A well-preserved group of watermills in the parish of Pardemarín, which can be walked as a signposted route; it is one of the municipality's several concentrations of water heritage, along with the mills of Vesacarballa.
Curiosity
The stone enclosure where the wild horses brought down from the hills are penned during the rapa; it is the fixed setting of a festival that every July brings between twenty and thirty thousand visitors to a tiny hamlet.
Activity
The Rapa das Bestas de Sabucedo is the curro held every year in the hamlet of Sabucedo, in the municipality of A Estrada, over four days: the first Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday of July. More than six hundred horses are brought down to the curro, divided into fourteen herds that live free on a mountain range of two hundred square kilometres. The aloitadores subdue them and cut their manes by hand, without ropes or sticks, using only their skill. The bringing down of the horses to Sabucedo, in which hundreds of people take part, is part of the festival, as is the mass celebrated at dawn on Saturday in honour of san Lorenzo, patron saint of Sabucedo, so that no accident occurs. It was declared of National Tourist Interest in 1963 and International in 2007.
Activity
Held since 1974 on the third weekend in May around the salmon fisheries of the River Ulla, it is declared a Festival of Tourist Interest in Galicia and includes an international fishing competition at Ximonde.
Monument
Opened in 1982 and renamed in 1994 after one of its founders, it brings together a hundred or so carpentry tools, personal mementoes of Castelao and a reconstruction of an early 20th-century classroom.
Monument
In the parish of Riobó stand the remains of the fortress with which the archbishopric of Compostela administered the land of Tabeirós. Torn down during the irmandiño revolt of the 15th century, it never recovered its function. The land of Tabeirós passed to the archbishops of Santiago in the time of Alfonso VII, in exchange for their giving up the castle of Faro, in A Coruña, and the fortress became a key point for collecting the region's rents and controlling the road to Ourense and Santiago, with a merino appointed directly by the archbishop. In 1342 it belonged to the nobleman Vasco Pérez, whom Alfonso XI ordered to pay homage to archbishop Martín Fernández de Gres, since the fortress was being used to commit acts of violence against the region's inhabitants and pilgrims.
Monument
Ashlar bridge over the Ulla linking A Estrada with Teo and the provinces of Pontevedra and A Coruña. Built in the 16th century and rebuilt in the 18th, it was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) on 9 November 2017. It stands at a historic crossroads of trade and pilgrimage routes, which some authors identify with the Roman road between Bracara Augusta and Lucus Augusti. During the Peninsular War, in 1809, fighting around the bridge destroyed one of its arches, rebuilt in 1822. It was the only crossing over the Ulla in the area until 1980, when a parallel bridge was built for road traffic; in 2010 it was restored and reserved exclusively for pedestrian use.
Monument
The church of San Xurxo de Vea gives its name to the parish of the same name in the municipality of A Estrada, which in 2012 had 335 inhabitants spread across 15 population centres, compared with 446 in 1986. Of the original Romanesque temple only a baptismal font dated 1160 survives; the present building is much later, as recalled by an inscription stating that the work was carried out in the year 1746, when don Alonso de Nóboa Cundyn was parish priest.
Monument
The church of San Tomé de Ancorados, in the parish of the same name, has a single nave and a rectangular apse, and preserves inside numerous examples of Romanesque art. The parish, which in 2012 had 122 inhabitants spread across six population centres, celebrates the feast of its patron, San Tomé, on 21 December, at the height of the winter solstice.
Nature
A 1.3-hectare lagoon at 700 metres above sea level, between the municipalities of A Estrada, Forcarei and Silleda, included in the special area of conservation of As Brañas de Xestoso. Around it remain the heavily deteriorated remains of an old wall, to which local tradition attributes legends of battles and sunken villages. The surrounding area, of scrubland and wet meadows, is home to amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals such as foxes and wolves. For about two decades the lagoon has tended to dry up in summer, something that did not happen before, since it used to hold water all year round.
Nature
The stretch of the Ulla that marks the northern boundary of the municipality of A Estrada is part of the Natura 2000 network for its riverside forests and for being one of the few Galician rivers where Atlantic salmon still swim upstream. It forms part of the Ulla-Deza river system, a 1,633-hectare special area of conservation that protects the banks of the Ulla and the final stretch of its tributary the Deza, as well as other minor tributaries and the estuary in the ria of Arousa, the latter accounting for only 16% of the total area. The area is shared among nine municipalities in A Coruña province and six in Pontevedra province, among them A Estrada, and stands out for its rich fish fauna and traditional fishing spots.
Nature
A hill included in the special area of conservation of As Brañas de Xestoso, in the highlands that A Estrada shares with Forcarei and Silleda. Its surroundings of peat bogs and scrubland are among the most distinctive in the municipality. It reaches 749 metres above sea level and on its summit there is a chapel and a fire-watch tower, together with a viewpoint from which the whole Escuadro valley can be seen.
Curiosity
Os Xenerais da Ulla is a mask tradition specific to the Entroido, documented since the 1870s, whose main figures are horsemen wearing a plumed Napoleonic-style cap, medals, boots and a sabre, who ride through the parishes of the Ulla region, among municipalities such as A Estrada, Vedra, Silleda, Boqueixón and Vila de Cruces. The riders are organised into two sides, defender and invader, accompanied by a group of young men and a band of freely costumed revellers. Its central element is the atranque or alto, a dialectical dispute between generals that rises in tone but always ends in reconciliation. There is no certainty about its origin, though it is usually linked to the Peninsular War or the Carlist Wars. Today it is a Festa de Interese Turístico de Galicia (an official designation for festivities of special touristic interest).
Curiosity
In the parish of Codeseda there existed a monastery documented as early as before 1164. Of that complex there remain today the rectory and the nearby cruceiro, as well as the memory in the hamlet's place name.
Monument
Founded in 1670 in the place of Monteagudo, in the parish of Codeseda, it forms an ensemble with the pazo of the same name. Near it is also found the chapel of the Virgen de Guadalupe, raised around 1748.
Curiosity
The town devotes to its patron saint, in the last week of June, the main festive event of the local calendar, around the 26th of that month, with events that fill the built-up area of this comarcal head town for days.
Monument
A suspension footbridge of fifty-five metres crosses the Ulla at the Ximonde fishing preserve and joins A Estrada with Vedra, that is to say, two provinces. The preserve also has a refuge, an interpretation centre and a fish farm.
Historical milestone
Archbishop Martín Fernández de Gres laid siege to the fortress in order to put an end to the banditry that operated from its walls. The lawsuit over its possession with the nobility dragged on until Count Pedro Enríquez returned it in 1400.
Historical milestone
The king sold the estate of Oca to María de Neira, and from there it passed to the Gaioso lineage, which raised the pazo between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1948 the Duchess of Medinaceli inherited it and in 1953 it was opened to the public.
Historical milestone
During the War of Independence the bridge over the Ulla lost one of its arches, which was not rebuilt until 1822. Fresh repairs in 1845 restored the crossing to a road used for centuries by muleteers and pilgrims.
Activity
Every May the concello devotes a festival to the salmon of the Ulla, accompanied by an international fishing championship in the Ximonde preserve. The fish is prepared over embers and in traditional riverside preparations.
Food and drink
Besides salmon, in the preserves of the Ulla sea trout and brown trout are fished, two species that sustain the river cooking of the riverside parishes of the concello, much less known than that of coastal shellfish.