An agreement has been signed with the Association of municipalities of the Camiño Miñoto Ribeiro, a non-profit association founded in 2014 to recover and promote this itinerary which runs from Braga (Portugal) to Santiago de Compostela.
The central objective of the European project rurAllure, led by the University of Vigo in collaboration with other institutions and organisations from six European countries, is the valorisation of the cultural heritage located in the vicinity of the historical pilgrimage routes in Europe. One of the four pilot projects of the initiative, coordinated by the atlanTTic researcher Martín López Nores, focuses on the literary heritage of the Camino de Santiago. The Medicine and Public Health research group (MP1) of the Faculty of Physiotherapy joins the framework to collect information on the heritage of the Camiño Miñoto Ribeiro, an ancient pilgrimage route that leads to Compostela from the south of the province of Ourense. With this objective, the group, coordinated by Professor Lourdes Maceiras, signed a collaboration agreement between the Camiño Miñoto Ribeiro Association and rurAllure.
The agreement, signed by the mayor of Cortegada, Avelino Luis de Francisco, makes the Association an “associate partner”. The Association shares the rurAllure mission to promote the rural heritage along the historic pilgrimage routes and enrich the experience of people crossing them.
Using technological tools and innovative strategies, the initiative promotes cultural heritage along the itineraries, attracting new visitors and contributing to the development of rural areas. Within this framework, the MP1 group will work on the identification of cultural heritage linked to the route, which is not considered an official Jacobean route and which connects northern Portugal to Compostela, crossing the Galician municipalities of Lobios, Entrimo, Padrenda, Pontedeva, Cortegada, A Arnoia, Castrelo de Miño, Ribadavia, Beade, Leiro, O Carballiño, Boborás, Beariz, Forcarei, A Estrada, Vedra e Boqueixón.
“Our goal is to identify a series of points of interest along the route,” says Maceiras, also mentioning that the group has been working since 2008 to enhance the natural and cultural heritage of the route, marked by “numerous therapeutic thermal springs” – work that culminated in the publication of the Health and Care Guide on the Miñoto Ribeiro road last year by the UVigo Linguistic Normalization Area. In the case of rurAllure, the thematic axis of the pilot project includes the literary heritage of the Camino de Santiago, “both what is written and what comes from the oral tradition,” – explains Maceiras. This is the current focus of the MP1 group which includes the municipalities of the association, “which have already collected their literary heritage in many cases”. Speaking about the landmarks of the route, Maceiras highlighted the municipalities of Boborás, where the House Museum of Antón Losada Diéguez is located; Cortegada, where Fermín Bouza Brey is buried; Carballiño, in front of the Pazo de Banga, where Emilia Pardo Bazán lived; not to mention other cultural heritage, such as the books and stories from Arraia, that can be linked to a route connecting Galicia with Portugal.
