A wine press cut into rock, a town built around its cellars, a river valley transformed by a dam. Follow the places and people who made the Ribeiro and its neighbouring lands.
The earliest chapters survive in the ground: burial mounds, defended settlements and the remains of homes. Roman roads and river crossings connected these communities with a wider world. At Santa Lucía de Astariz, a wine press built in the later first century AD makes early winemaking part of the valley’s own archaeology.
Follow the hillside settlement in Castrelo, then the Ponte do Freixo over the Arnoia in Cartelle. These are two ways into the same story: producing a harvest and moving through the land.
5th — 10th c.
Early Medieval
Interpretive illustration
From Kingdoms to Churches and Estates
Suevic and Visigothic rulers changed the political map of the northwest. Church networks gave the landscape another structure. By the tenth century, royal and monastic charters bring local places into sharper view: Castrelo’s religious community, Celanova’s lands, donations and the rights attached to them.
A church could be a centre of devotion, property and authority at once. The Castrelo and Cartelle chapters trace how those relationships reached into the villages beside the Miño and Arnoia.
10th — 15th c.
Medieval Golden Age
Interpretive illustration
The Vineyard and the Town Grow Together
Long-term vineyard leases linked households with monasteries and other landowners. Growers planted and tended the vines; rents carried part of the harvest into distant cellars and accounts. Ribadavia’s royal charter of 1164 belongs to the rise of a town where that countryside met markets, civic institutions and a Jewish community.
The Ribeiro chapter follows a medieval parchment roll and its named tenants. Ribadavia takes the story into town: streets, wine measures, scribes and the households above the cellars.
16th — 18th c.
Early Modern
Interpretive illustration
Wine, Power and the Cost of Belonging
The wine trade reached Atlantic ports, while great houses displayed the wealth of estates. Behind that prosperity lay rents, debt and disputes over property. Conversion and the expulsion decree of 1492 had transformed Jewish life; the Ribadavia Inquisition proceedings of 1606–1610 brought further persecution into the history of converso households.
Explore the pazos through their cellars, chapels and working estates. Then follow the Sephardic chapter for the people whose kinship and occupations survive in documents of a very different kind.
19th c. — today
Modern Era
Interpretive illustration
Loss, Recovery and the Places Still Alive
Vine diseases forced growers to learn new treatments and replant. Emigration took family members across oceans and borders. In 1968, Castrelo’s reservoir flooded productive riverside land and changed the Miño’s appearance. These transformations reached into household incomes, familiar paths and decisions about whether to stay.
Today’s growers, museums, village celebrations and theatre keep this history alive. Visit Castrelo for the reservoir’s human story, Cartelle for local traditions, and Ribadavia for a town whose streets still become a stage.
The Avia, Miño and Arnoia valleys are the thread running through this guide. Read the regional history, explore the households and surnames, then open the tree to see the relationships supported by records.
