Cea Bread Festival

San Cristovo de Cea

This year there will be no Festa do Pan de Cea, but that town of Ourense does not renounce to the smell and taste of its famous delicacy to be the protagonist, as it is tradition, of the first weekend of the month of July. Coinciding with what should be the thirtieth edition of the festival, the Council and the Consello Regulador do Pan de Cea have opted to recover this year the Ruta dos Fornos, to be held on July 3. Participants will be able to pass through a total of 10 stalls (6 ovens and 4 squares) and at the same time get to know the rich ethnographic heritage of Cea. There will be musical entertainment during the route and a final concert by Javier Ojeda, the leader of the group Danza Invisible. In addition, during the morning Cea will host the twelfth edition of the Celtiberian Pipe Band Contest Memorial Muíño. For all the activities an anticovid protocol will be applied and in the case of the Ruta dos Fornos and the concert it is necessary to register in advance.

More information at https://www.rutadosfornos.es/web/

Cereixas Fair in Paiosaco

A Laracha

The first Sunday in July is the tastiest in the festive calendar of the town of Paiosaco, in the municipality of A Laracha in A Coruña. It is the usual place for a fortnightly fair where it is possible to find all kinds of farm produce and household items, but at this time of year it is cherries that become the star product of the Sunday market, attracting buyers from many other municipalities. This year the Council has limited the usual activities that enliven the morning fair, but in the evening there will be a concert by Xabier Díaz and the Adufeiras de Salitre. To attend the recital it will be necessary to register in advance through the form on the council’s website.

More information at https://www.alaracha.gal/

Lobster Festival

A Guarda

A Guarda’s Lobster and Seafood Festival should be thirty-one years old this summer. It is a celebration that since its inception has not failed to gather a multitude of diners in the marquee installed in the port area. As last year, the local authorities have decided this time to suspend the celebration, but the local restaurants will continue to offer their tasty proposals to those who visit the town. In addition, the Council has resumed the guided tours of the Santa Trega mountain, so gastronomy is not the only incentive to visit the southernmost town on the Galician coast.

More information at https://www.facebook.com/Turismo-A-Guarda-126223240790625/

Rapa das Bestas de Sabucedo

A Estrada

The first weekend in July is also the date on which one of the most important and unique ethnographic celebrations in Galicia takes place: the Rapa das Bestas of Sabucedo, declared of Galician tourist interest almost half a century ago and elevated in 2007 to a celebration of international interest. It is a centuries-old tradition in which all the local residents take part and which brings together hundreds of people from all over Galicia. Many of the latter actively participate by helping to bring down the horses and colts from the mountains located in the parish of the municipality of A Estrada (Pontevedra) which gives its name to the festival, although in the central part of the celebration (the shave and the branding, with electronic chips, of the animals inside the curro) they must be content to be mere spectators of the work of the aloitadores. This year, because of the covid and in order to find dates when the evolution of the pandemic is more favourable, the organisers have decided to postpone the celebration to the end of August (27th, 28th and 29th), so we will have to wait a little longer to be able to contemplate this spectacular ritual.

More information at https://www.facebook.com/RapaDasBestas/

Rapa das Bestas de Candaoso

Viveiro

Also in Viveiro they keep alive the ancestral tradition of the rapa, gathering once a year the horses that are bred in freedom to cut their manes and mark them with the corresponding microchips. The curro located in Candaoso is the scene of this rite, which became a festival just over half a century ago, but which for the second consecutive year has been suspended due to the covid. We will have to wait until 2022 to see the encounter between men and horses again, although taking a walk around the Curro, trying to spot the horses in the nearby hills and enjoying the views of the estuary is a good alternative at any time of the year.

More information at https://www.facebook.com/rapadasbestas.viveiro.1

The Santa Trega castro is in the middle of the climb between the town of A Guarda and the mountaintop. It must have been a settlement of some importance: it is estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 people lived there, and although the area that can be visited today is considerable, most of the city remains buried.

The excavations began in 1912 with the help of wealthy emigrants, interested in the past of the town where they had been born, and still continue nowadays. Most of the buildings found date from the turn of the millennium, between the first century BC and the first one AD, although archeological  works have discovered that the fort was previously occupied, in the Neolithic period, and that it was inhabited until well after.

The abundance of houses with a round design speaks to the scant Romanesque influence it had at the time. The cabins were built on bedrock and had a main room, sometimes equipped with benches, and a small entrance patio. On many occasions, these houses are located around a larger patio, which may indicate that they belonged to the same family or unit. In addition to housing, researchers have located buildings that once served as storage (the village was essentially agricultural, as shown by the numerous mills found). Some of these constructions have been recreated to show how the population lived. Children will have a great time going in and out of these peculiar time machines.

Once you have visited the settlement, it is essential to climb to the top of the mountain. It can be done by car through a narrow but comfortable road, but it is also possible to do it on foot, following a beautiful via crucis that leads to the top and the Santa Trega hermitage. The church was built in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, although it has traces of previous eras. The via crucis is more recent, work of the Valencian sculptor Vicent Mengual.

At the top is the old restaurant, designed by the O Porriño architect Antonio Palacios and later converted into the area’s interpretation museum. There is also a viewpoint, the kind that takes your breath away, because it allows a 360-degree panoramic view of the Baixo Miño region and the north of Portugal. Right in the place where the waters of the river and the sea mix is the curious islet of A Ínsua, belonging to the neighboring country, in which a fortress still stands, a witness to the close vigilance between the two countries, today happily twinned.

That is why today we will enter in those stories that, real or not (who knows?), transcend through the years, passing from generation to generation.

Have you ever heard of the Santa Compaña? It is perhaps the best known of the legends and the most terrifying has awakened among children and adults over time. It would be a procession of souls in penalty headed by a living person (the first one they met that night) and whose purpose is to visit, after midnight, those people they want to put on notice of a future death.

This is, perhaps, the most fearsome legend, but there are of all kinds…

They say that in the area of ​​O Morrazo, on Mount Paralaia, there is a cave full of treasures and secret passages that fall directly into the sea, and that only in the night of San Juan can be accessed to try to rescue the gold hidden inside, since only at midnight on June 24 will come the “mouras” who live there to wash and comb their hair, leaving the access free.

It is precisely the night of San Juan that has more magic around. For this reason, there are numerous rituals that are repeated every year in all parts of Galicia in order to call good luck or end with the spells of the “meigas”. One of the best known is that of jumping nine times over a bonfire; only in this way will we attract good luck and make our wishes come true, in addition to removing the “males de ollo”, since the fire will give us protection. Another tradition is to collect aromatic plants of different kinds, leave them in water under the moon all night and, in the morning, wash with that water.

But let’s keep the legends…

In Monforte de Lemos, in the Monastery of San Vicente del Pino, the legend of the crown of fire is famous. This legend speaks of the existence of an underground passage between the palace where the Earl of Lemos and the church of San Vicente lived. They say that during the absence of the Earl, the abbot of the monastery used this passage to go to his meetings with the daughter of the earl, with whom he kept a secret romance. One day the Earl finds out and decides to invite the abbot to his palace for a meal and, in the course of this, by surprise, one of his servants places a red crown of iron on his head, causing him to die instantly.

And do you know how the rivers were born in these lands? The legend says that God, on the seventh day of his creation, sat down to rest on the summit of Mount Santa Tecla, in A Guarda. When he was sitting there, he slipped into his seat, because everything was filled with mud because of the heavy rains, and to try to keep his balance, he rested his right hand on the mud. It was thus that, when withdrawing his hand, he left five large crevices that were quickly occupied by the sea, giving rise to the estuaries of Vigo, Pontevedra, Arousa, Muros and Noia, and Corcubión.

These are just a few, but the truth is that Galicia is full of stories and legends.

Which do you know?

This festival is a Celtic holiday whose beginning dates back to 1913. Since then, and every year, thousands of people participate for a week in a wide program that includes activities of various types, including the parade and “Día do Monte” those that congregate a greater amount of visitors.

The beginning of the celebrations of this year mark the popular pedestrian races in the Alameda of A Guarda and the Trophy Festas do Monte of Rolley Hockey during the afternoon of Saturday 5th of August. From there, on the 7th, the central theme begins, and during that day and the following ones take place parades in charge of groups of bagpipes by the town, verbenas with known orchestras, samples of craftsmanship and gastronomic tastings, as well as a small Festival in the Plaza de As de Copas (XIII Rock in Fervenza), the traditional folkloric parade and the ascent to the mount of Santa Trega. The parties will end on Tuesday 15th with a spectacular fireworks display in the town’s harbor.

Of all the programming, we have to make special mention to the ascent to the mountain, whose origin goes back to year 1912, when it was created in A Guarda the Pro-Monte Society of Santa Tecla, whose purpose was to revitalize religious celebrations of the hermitage, reforest the surroundings, improve the environment and construct a new access road to it. The following year, the society organized the first Festa do Monte and, although in its first editions it had a purely familiar character, soon became popular, becoming an annual celebration only interrupted during the Civil War. Today stands the pilgrimage of seafaring bands that rise from early morning to the summit of the mountain, frightening the bad omens to the sound of their drums and their bass drums.

Once up, together with friends and family, they look for a shade under which to have lunch and spend the day that, this year, is Sunday 13th. With the advance of the afternoon they undertake the return to the town of A Guarda and all participate of a great verbena in which they will begin to think already in the celebration of the following year.