Fervenza do Ézaro
Cascada del Ézaro
Interesting facts
- The 18th-century scholar Martín Sarmiento held that Monte Pindo was named for its likeness to Mount Pindus in Greece.
- In the 10th century Bishop Sisnando of Iria Flavia had the castle of San Xurxo built on Monte Pindo against pirates; it was destroyed in 1467 during the Irmandiño revolts.
- A Latin inscription on a lone boulder records the excommunication of a castle on the mountain, tied to a 1130 dispute involving Archbishop Diego Gelmírez.
- The dwarf Lusitanian oak grows on Monte Pindo in its only Galician stand, covering roughly one square kilometre.
- Monte Pindo's granite formed during the Hercynian mountain-building of the Palaeozoic, and its highest point is known as A Moa.
- The plunge pool at the foot of the fall, the Cadoiro do Xallas, is more than 20 metres deep.
- The main dam upstream, Fervenza, was built in the 1960s, and three hydroelectric plants stand near the river's mouth.
- In January 2013 heavy rain forced the dams to release the Xallas, giving the waterfall a flow not seen for decades.
- In September 2013 a wildfire on Monte Pindo burned well over 1,000 hectares and reached the sea at Ézaro.
- Archaeologists have found petroglyphs, bronze tools and traces of an old hermitage on the slopes of Monte Pindo.
Why it is worth it
On Galicia's Costa da Morte, the Xallas River ends its journey not in an estuary but in a waterfall that pours almost straight into the Atlantic. At Ézaro, in the municipality of Dumbría, the river crashes down the granite flank of Monte Pindo into a small bay, making it one of very few rivers in Europe of any size to meet the ocean this way. In the last stretch the river loses 155 metres of height, and the final fall drops about 40 metres onto rock walls that the water has carved into a canyon over a very long time, ending in a deep plunge pool.
People have been struck by it for centuries. Texts from 1724 already describe the waterfall, comparing its spray to a great column of smoke that could be seen from several kilometres out at sea. Its old popular name, O Cadoiro, has been in use at least since the time of the 18th-century scholar Martín Sarmiento. Monte Pindo, which rises to about 630 metres behind the falls, is a mass of granite eroded into strange shapes, among them a famously balanced boulder, the Pedra do Brazal. The mountain and its surroundings are protected within the Natura 2000 network, and the area shelters rare plants for Galicia, such as the dwarf Lusitanian oak and the carnivorous great sundew, as well as otters and wolves.
The river's flow is shaped by a long industrial history. From 1897 a carbide company built its first power plants on the Xallas, and several dams and hydroelectric stations were later added upstream and near the mouth, so the waterfall today runs on a regulated flow. Local legend tells of an enchanted gateway behind the falling water, guarded by witches, through which a daring young man could pass beneath the river to marry a spellbound princess and win a fortune.
Getting there
The waterfall lies in the village of O Ézaro, in Dumbría, about 7 km from the town of Cee on the Costa da Morte. Santiago–Rosalía de Castro Airport (SCQ) is about 57 km away in a straight line. The road along the coast between Carnota and Cee passes the village.
On these lists
42.91270, -9.11682per Wikidata