Village
Forcarei is a mountain concello in the north of the province of Pontevedra, where the Umia, Lérez and Verdugo rivers rise, flowing into the Rías Baixas; it has around 3,000 inhabitants, compared with the 3,409 it had in the mid-19th century. It is the birthplace of notable artists: the filmmaker Chano Piñeiro, creator of Mamasunción and Sempre Xonxa, the first feature film shot entirely in Galicia and in Galician; the photographer Virxilio Vieitez, born in Soutelo de Montes; and the bagpiper Avelino Cachafeiro, proclaimed the best gaitero in Galicia in 1924 and the first to record the celebrated Muiñeira de Chantada. Its greatest monument is the Cistercian monastery of Santa María de Aciveiro, active since the 12th century and today converted into a guesthouse.
Monument
The mosteiro of Santa María de Aciveiro, founded on 4 February 1135 by twelve Benedictine monks from Clairvaux summoned by King Alfonso VII, and later attached to the Cistercian order, shaped the economic and social life of the Terra de Montes until its exclaustration by the disentailment of 1842. It stands beside the old road from Vendas de Narón to Folgoso, at almost a thousand metres above sea level, in the parish of Santa María de Aciveiro, in the municipality of Forcarei. It controlled lands in four provinces until the 17th century. Its church, an example of late Galician Romanesque, has a basilical plan with three naves and three apses, a pentagonal chevet and an unusual triforium gallery. Among its abbots san Gonzalo das Penas stood out, who governed the community between 1429 and his death around 1475. It has been declared a historic-artistic monument since 1931 and is today a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
Monument
A parish church of the late 18th century designed by the stonemasons Pedro Varela and Pedro Gutiérrez, with a façade of neoclassical lines; it presides over the main settlement of a municipality divided into thirteen parishes.
Monument
A 15th-century stone crossing used for centuries by the pilgrims coming up towards Santiago from the south; it is one of the string of historic bridges that mark the upper course of the River Lérez.
Monument
A parish church dated 1659 that was the seat of the judges appointed by the archbishops of Santiago for this upland country; the church of Santa Mariña also stands in the same parish.
Nature
A range in the Galician central ridge that extends through Forcarei, Lalín, Silleda, Beariz and O Irixo, where the Lérez and Umia rivers and tributaries of the Deza rise. Its orientation parallel to the coast produces the Föhn effect: humid Atlantic fronts rise up the western slope, cool and release rain before reaching the summit, while the leeward side receives air that is already dry. A Natura 2000 site of 10,683 hectares with eighteen habitats and species such as the golden eagle and the eagle owl, alongside more common ones such as the goshawk or the wolf. It combines gallery forests and fragas in the hollows with gorse (toxo) and heather (uz) scrubland on the summits. Its highest point is the Alto de San Bieito, a little over a thousand metres -1,015 or 1,017-, followed by O Coco (969 m). In the early 21st century a wind farm was installed there.
Nature
A waterfall considered one of Galicia's great unknowns and one of the highest drops in the province of Pontevedra; it hides in the municipality's hills, far from the main roads and barely signposted.
Nature
A small watermill accompanied by a waterfall, reached from the road that links Levoso with Quintillán; it is an example of the water heritage spread along the upper course of the Lérez.
Nature
A little-known waterfall set in a spot of ash and oak trees, one more of those that follow one another on the streams running down from the slopes of the Serra do Candán towards the Lérez valley.
Nature
On the hill of San Bieito, in the Serra do Candán, three of the great rivers of the province of Pontevedra rise, which run down from these heights towards the Rías Baixas: the Umia towards Arousa, the Lérez towards Pontevedra and the Verdugo towards Vigo. Few Galician municipalities share out their waters in this way.
Nature
A natural balcony on Monte do Seixo commanding much of the Terra de Montes; it is reached by a maintenance track that climbs from the valley through scrub and granite outcrops.
Curiosity
Snow pits preserved at 810 metres in the Serra do Candán, where the winter snow was packed down and stored, a practice that supplied the comarca with ice before refrigeration.
Curiosity
A stone enclosure built to shelter beehives from the wind and from animals, an example of traditional Galician beekeeping architecture, preserved at the place of Pereira, in the municipality's uplands.
Curiosity
A large water-powered industrial complex that brought together a flour mill, a sawmill and a joinery, and which served the surrounding parishes when the force of the river was the only energy available in the mountains.
Activity
A linear trail of some fourteen and a half kilometres, officially approved as the PR-G 113, which follows the course of the Lérez between the monastery of Aciveiro and the place of Gaxín, linking bridges, mills and wash-houses.
Activity
A circular route of fifteen kilometres officially approved as the PR-G 100 which starts at the monastery of Aciveiro and climbs to the heights of the Serra do Candán, inside the Natura 2000 protected area.
Monument
15th-century watchtower, also called Torre de Alarma de Castrelo or Torre Vella de Barciela, built at the place of Barciela (parish of Santa Mariña de Castrelo) next to the parish church, making use of the remains of an earlier fortification. It has a quadrangular plan, with an outer staircase surrounding the entrance, and three tiers: a round-arched oven with large voussoirs on the first, a platform for light signals on the second and, on the third, a kind of bell-gable with a round arch topped by a small pediment with an eave and a pinnacle at the top. A Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 17 October 1994, it is one of the few examples of defensive architecture preserved in the highlands of the municipality.
Nature
As brañas de Xestoso is a natural area declared a special area of conservation in December 2004, located in the municipalities of Forcarei, Silleda and A Estrada, between the basins of the Ulla, Deza and Umia rivers, and which includes the Sacra de Olives lagoon and San Sebastián hill. Its nearly 1082 hectares bring together low heath and legume scrubland, grassy meadows, peat bogs with lichens and rushes, and transition zones towards wet meadows with heather and carqueixa shrubs, as well as siliceous rock outcrops and oak woods. It is home to breeding harriers, along with falcons, short-toed eagles, robins, little bustards and skylarks, among other birds, as well as the viperine snake and several species of frogs and toads.
Nature
The Cando mountain range, declared a special area of conservation in 2004, extends at an average altitude of between 600 and 1,000 metres across the municipalities of Cerdedo-Cotobade, Forcarei, A Lama and Beariz, and links up with the Candán range through the hills of Costoia; the Verdugo and Almofrei rivers rise there. Its vegetation combines broom and gorse scrub, heather and carqueixa with large pine and eucalyptus plantations, while in the higher areas and in the carballeiras of the Verdugo and its tributaries a highly valuable ecosystem is preserved. It covers some 5,484 hectares of the municipality of Forcarei.
Curiosity
Portalén, or Porta do Alén, and the Marco do Vento are two geological formations close to each other on Mount Seixo, in the Cando range, between Forcarei and A Lama. Portalén is a large split rock that holds another stone within its cracks, forming a kind of doorway; it is regarded as an oracle of Samaín, an access point to the otherworld, and tradition dictates that one should offer it bread, wine or a candle and ask it a question that the wind answers, though the answer can never be told afterwards. Nearby, the Marco do Vento is a stone five metres wide and six metres high that served as a boundary marker between Cerdedo, Forcarei, A Lama and Cotobade. Interest in the site was revived from 2002 with the research of Carlos Solla, following the devastation of the area by a wind farm built in 1999-2000.
Curiosity
The Forcarei Astronomical Observatory, run by the Fundación Ceo, Ciencia e Cultura, stands at 670 metres above sea level, about three kilometres from the town, on the road towards A Estrada. It has two floors: the lower one, eight metres in diameter, houses facilities and the telescope control, and the upper one, beneath a five-metre dome, houses the main instrument, a Ritchey-Chrétien with a 50.8-centimetre aperture and a CCD camera. It achieved first light on 13 March 2009 and opened to the public a month later; it went on to carry out research and outreach work with school groups, though since 2011 it has reduced its activity and come to rely on municipal support. Today it opens with reduced hours on open days and by prior arrangement.
Activity
An approved circular route of fifteen kilometres that sets out from the monastery of Aciveiro and runs through the foothills of the sierra do Candán among brooks, oak groves and mountain hamlets.
Activity
An approved linear itinerary of fourteen kilometres that links the monastery of Aciveiro with the hamlet of Gaxín, crossing the landscape of wet meadows and hay meadows characteristic of the Terra de Montes.
Historical milestone
The monastery of Santa María de Aciveiro, in the parish of the same name (Forcarei, Pontevedra), was founded on 4 February 1135, when twelve Benedictine monks from Clairvaux, summoned by King Alfonso VII, formed the community; the high number of founders, compared with other similar foundations, underscored the importance of the gesture. At almost a thousand metres above sea level, beside the road that linked Vendas de Narón with Folgoso, it shaped the life of the Terra de Montes for centuries. Around 1225 it joined the Cistercian order, and between 1571 and 1577 it came to house close to a hundred monks. The first abbot was Pedro; the most notable, Saint Gonzalo das Penas, governed from 1429 until his death, around 1475. A Monumento Histórico Artístico (a former heritage-protection category, predecessor of the Bien de Interés Cultural) since 1931, it remained active until its dissolution as a religious community in 1842.
Historical milestone
The Mendizábal disentailment dissolved the community, and the final liquidation of its assets was completed in 1842, the year of its auction. The monastery, which had dominated the economy of the Terra de Montes, was left abandoned. Founded in 1135 by twelve Benedictine monks from Clairvaux summoned by Alfonso VII, the monastery of Santa María de Aciveiro joined the Cistercian order around 1225 and came to house 106 members of religious orders in its best times. Located at almost a thousand metres above sea level beside the old road from Vendas de Narón to Folgoso, it was regarded as a monumento histórico-artístico (a former heritage-protection category, predecessor of the Bien de Interés Cultural) from 1931 and is today a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection); its grounds cover 46,658 square metres, a good part of which corresponds to farmland attached to the conventual building and the church.
Historical milestone
The quartet directed by Avelino Cachafeiro presented itself at the Teatro Avenida in Buenos Aires before the Galician colony. Active between 1919 and 1936, they also took the bagpipe of Soutelo to Montevideo and to Brazil.
Activity
Born in 2002 in the parish of Quintillán (Forcarei), it gives away, free of charge, hundreds of kilos of snails prepared Rioja-style in the carballeira of Ponte da Devesa, accompanied by grilled meat and octopus. It is held on the first Sunday of September in the hamlet of Graña de Umia, which draws people from across the area. The festival begins at midday with the free distribution of the snails among those attending, who can round out the meal with churrasco and Galician-style octopus. After the meal, a musical group livens up the afternoon well into the night, closing a day born from the initiative of a group of local residents.
Activity
An autumn gathering with tastings of saffron milk caps, boletus mushrooms and chanterelles, a mushroom-basket contest, a craft market and walking and cycling routes. It is rounded out with wild boar, tripe and homemade desserts of filloas and rosquillas. The festival is held in the town of Soutelo de Montes, in the municipality of Forcarei, usually on a Sunday in October or November, and brings together at midday those attending to sample the mushrooms gathered in the area alongside other local produce.
Food and drink
The broadleaf stands and the plantations of the sierra produce every autumn an abundant mushroom crop that sustains the Soutelo festival and a gathering tradition deeply rooted in the Terra de Montes.
Historical milestone
The monastery of Santa María de Aciveiro, in the concello of Forcarei (Pontevedra), was founded on 4 February 1135: according to the inscription on the south wall of its church, on that day twelve Benedictine monks from Clairvaux, summoned by King Alfonso VII, formed the community — a number far greater than usual. Around 1225 it joined the Cistercians. In the mountainous interior of Tabeirós-Terra de Montes, at almost a thousand metres of altitude, beside the road that linked Vendas de Narón with Folgoso, it organised for centuries the settlement of the Terra de Montes, clearing brañas and high mountains. Its Romanesque church still stands over the river Lérez. Declared a Monumento Histórico Artístico (a former Spanish heritage-protection category) in 1931, it has a precinct of more than 46,000 m² comprising the monastic building, the churchyard and the former farmland.