Cowbells & Caretos in Vila e Roussas, Melgaço

A cowbell clangs before six, while the Tuela is still charcoal below its banks. In March the Caretos of Gondarénse spill into the lanes of Vila e Roussas: masks carved from alder buckthorn, scarlet and chrome, sheepskins slick across shoulders, empty sardine tins rattling round their waists. The clatter of iron cowbells drowns the farm dogs and even the drone of the micro-hydro turbine EDP installed two kilometres above the bridge. At 382 m the air slides straight off Larouco, sharp enough to sting, although the mimosa along the EN 202 is already a flare of yellow.

Between river and ridge

The Tuela rises in the Veiga de Gondarénse at 850 m and spends 11 km braiding through the parish. Sixteen watermills lie between Vila and Parada do Tuela; seven still turn oak paddles, yet only the one at Outeiro ground grain until 1983, the year miller Joaquim da Silva died. Walking trail PR1 hugs the river for 5.2 km; at 3.1 km a panel explains how four Garrano mares were brought from the Spanish Xurés in 1996 to re-establish the wild horse herd. Your best chance of seeing them is dusk, when they graze the biscuit-coloured fields above the Mata de Albergaria – 83 ha of public oakland where veteran Quercus robur reach 3.2 m in girth.

Stone witness

Vila’s parish church, listed in the 1258 Liber Fidei, lost its Manueline doorway after the 1755 flood and was rebuilt the following year. Inside, a gilt baroque altarpiece carved by José de Santo António Vilaça was paid for in 1783 with 88,000 réis donated by emigrants in Brazil. The medieval bridge has three unequal arches: the central 8 m span was reconstructed in 1932 by political prisoners of the Estado Novo – look for the stamped “PN” on the cutwater. In Roussas the chapel of São Bento (first mentioned 1694) hosts a procession every 21 March, a tradition begun in 1923 when the priest promised three annual masses if polio left the village.

What the hills cure

IGP-credited Melgaço hamstrings hang in Vila’s terraces from November to March, drying at 600 m where humidity hovers around 78 %. Salpicão sausage, protected since 1996, is made only from Barrosã beef; the blood chorizo is coloured with bola de Melgaço pimentón, grown in Seixas since 1850. Rocoto de borrego – the name adapted from Spanish recado – is simmered for four hours in an iron pot with Alvarinho white (DOP since 1975). The pot belongs to 84-year-old weaver Maria da Conceição, who still knits the Caretos’ woollen stockings. The São Martinho fair, licensed by King João I in 1412, fills the churchyard on 11–12 November; in 2023 traders sold 3.5 tonnes of Soajo chestnuts at €3 a kilo.

Footprints and fossils

A 420 m stretch of the Roman road Bracara–Asturica survives between Gondarénse and Parada: granite slabs 1.4 m wide, uncovered during 1985 excavations led by Margot Dissmann. The Coastal Portuguese Caminho de Santiago enters the parish at the 102 km waymark, follows the old royal lane and leaves by the 1892 wayside cross erected by António Gomes, returned from Rio de Janeiro. The bell of São Salvador, cast in 1832 from the bronze of Valença’s old gaol, rings at 19:30, the moment the village’s LED lamps – installed by the town hall in 2018 – flicker on.