Trademark – Pincheiro AT

ARCA DE OCCIDENTE

WHY THIS NAME?

ARCA and OCCIDENTE paired together express a spiritual and geographical experience for every traveller exploring enchanted routes. The Barbanza Peninsula has the rectangular shape of an ARCA enclosing natural treasures sealed with prehistoric traces of man in full magical, ritual and spiritual effervescence. The lid of the ARCA is the vault of the mountains that crown this peninsula, dotted with a multitude of prehistoric monuments. The side tables of this ARCA are the towns and villages scattered on the slopes of the mountains until they reach the sea, with an endless number of medieval and modern artistic testimonies full of magic and charm due to their Galician particularity, that aura of death and at the same time vitality, and the power of nature with its omnipresent climate. And this great mountainous chest is surrounded by the sea that brings life from the east to make it decay in the west, which is a whole tableau of death and beyond. It is a culture with sun and moon in magnetism towards the OCCIDENTE beyond. The WEST where the roads go, die and end in the ocean, in the beyond. ARCA DE OCCIDENTE crossed by royal roads where the one of Santiago goes, and where the identity of Europe ends, culminates and reinvents itself.

ARCA DE OCCIDENTE, or Nature as a meeting place, or great Document of petroglyphs and ancestral dolmens, point of departure and point of arrival to the West, mountains of meditation in high and silent dialogue where it is possible to touch the stars, peninsula between the sea, confidant and bearer of life and death, history and art as a sign of vital identity. ARCA DE OCCIDENTE or chest full of jewels of Barbanza that enchant and bewitch those who discover its spirituality and magic.

ARCA DE OCCIDENTE is like a trademark that articulates a series of cultural, educational and tourist services around this place and geographical concept of the Barbanza Peninsula. Pincheiro AT has developed routes and services to discover and live them through experiences. All these services are grouped under the Arca de Occidente brand.

BARBANZA AND ITS MUNICIPALITIES

The Barbanza peninsula is a mountainous massif of granite that juts into the Atlantic Ocean formed by a range of 25 km long and 10 km wide, whose highest point is the Iroite with 685 m of altitude. The local goverments of Rianxo, Boiro, Pobra do Caramiñal, Ribeira, Porto do Son, Noia and Lousame are located in this mountain range. This peninsula combines mountain and sea at a stone's throw, and all the local goverments climb uphill to converge at the mountain peaks. The Barbanza gives rise to a joint identity that shapes the 7 local council into an indivisible whole.

BARBANZA: A SEA AND MOUNTAIN EXPERIENCE; A SMALL MOUNTAIN RANGE SURROUNDED BY SEA.

The top of the mountain range is the perfect balcony from which to contemplate the route from East to West, moon and sun from sea to sea regulating prehistoric spirituality and rituality. A perfect setting where primitive peoples settled, with their prehistoric cathedrals or dolmens, and their prehistoric altarpieces or petroglyphs orienting their rituals (their spiritual food) looking towards the West, as they descended to gather the food of the body: the products of the sea. The mountain represents the roots of the Barbanza peoples; and the mountain is always in every spiritual system a place of ascent and a ritual stronghold. The sea is the source of work and life, and its projection to the West through emigration. The mountain is the ancestors in their stone monuments; the sea is the present because of its seafaring vocation and struggle for sustenance.

BARBANZA CROSSED BY TWO ROUTES OF THE CAMINO DE SANTIAGO

In a part of the Barbanza, the Ría de Arousa, is the origin of the Jacobean Route, the maritime way by which, according to tradition, the body of the Apostle Santiago ascended in a boat driven by his two disciples towards the future lands of Compostela (Traslatio). This Way of origin has been officially recognized as the Way of St. James. On the other side of the Barbanza, Ría de Muros Noia, is the port of the Apostle (Portus Apostoli) in the town of Noia, which in the Middle Ages was a place of maritime traffic to Compostela, the place where pilgrimages entered by sea. Noia also treasures the largest museum of guild tombstones in the world, in which Christian signs and symbols related to the petroglyphs of the mountain appear. Between the route (Translation of the Apostle in the Arousa estuary) and the route (portus apostoli) of Noia is the small mountain range of Barbanza full of dolmens and petroglyphs, whose center is the dolmen of the Ark of Barbanza. The name ARCA DE OCCIDENTE refers to this mountainous route that joins the two Ways of St. James: the translation of the Apostle in the Arousa estuary and the portus apostoli of the town of Noia. This small mountain range, a cluster of mountains dotted with dolmens and petroglyphs, prehistoric ritual route that focuses its funerary and life spirituality towards the west where the sun dies, is the remote origin of the Jacobean spirituality of the two estuaries of Arousa and Muros-Noia.

Objectives ARCA DE OCCIDENTE

- Discover the natural heritage of Barbanza through routes: sea and mountain.
- To know the spiritual and ritual value of the West and what it represented for primitive peoples.
- To know the prehistoric monuments (Dolmen and Petroglyphs), their interpretation, their meaning, their orientation to the West where the sun dies.
- To discover the ancestral meaning of life and death, their rites and magic, in the existence of prehistoric men in the Barbanza Peninsula.
- To identify how they understood the hereafter and the hereafter regulated by the stars in their journey from east to west.
- To live the magical experience of primitive peoples in their connection with the current culture and identity.
- To enter the route of the ARCA DE OCCIDENTE, connecting route between both routes of the Camino de Santiago, in the peaks of Barbanza. To live the experience of the way, as an element that shapes the human person from the origins, in its ancestral spirituality.
- To understand how the prehistoric roots (the petroglyphs) have been regenerated through medieval history in Noia's guild tombstones.
- Discover the enchanted places found in the foothills of the Barbanza mountains as a modern extension of the primitive rituals: Typical Galician environments of the churches surrounded by the atriums with their tombstones, their holy field, their crossroad, their rectory, their dovecote, their hórreo; all forming a place of utmost charm.

ARCA DE OCCIDENTE and its services

If you want to live the experience of all these proposals, Pincheiro understands The Ark of the West as a brand that brings together a series of services around the cultural, anthropological and geographical concept of the Barbanza Peninsula, full of treasures and monuments:

** 8 routes to discover the mysteries of Barbanza:
1. Route of the Mámoas: the temples and the hereafter/more here.
2. Route of the Petroglyphs: communication and mystery.
3. Routes of the Laudas: dialogue with history.
4. Enchanted Place. Xunqueiras and the royal manor: Power.
5. Enchanted Place. Castelo del Deán and the Apocalypse: Tradition.
6. Enchanted Place. Caramiñal, Pincheiros and the Sea: Society.
7. Traditional Galician places with charm and art: Sets of Churches, Dovecotes, Hórreos, Temples, Cemeteries and Crossroads.
8. Barbanza, between the mountain and the sea: Pincheiro's facade.

** A digital classroom in the Pincheiro AT establishment, designed to access all the information on these routes. Pincheiro AT has produced a large series of audiovisuals filmed in panoramic to, prior to each physical visit, make a digital tour of the routes that are proposed.
** Instruction and workshops on the routes and their content in the virtual classroom.
** Tourist guide in person of the routes. Tour of the 8 routes with a guide to walk the hiking path, to indicate the views and the elements that are presented, to describe the monuments and their characteristics reconstructing their sense and meaning.
** Annual organization of congresses, cultural workshops or conferences on the Ark of the West, its value and knowledge.
** Education service related to the Western Ark Trail and the history and meaning of the Way of St. James.
** Tourist and holiday accommodation service.
** Service of bar with tapas of typical products of the sea and of the land.
** Service of wines and beers with denomination of origin of Galicia.
** Service of gastronomic days related to seafood.
** Service of facilities for meetings and reunions.