Antioquía, the Drowned City beneath the Lagoa de Antela

The legend of Antioquía is the great myth of A Limia: beneath the waters of the former Lagoa de Antela would sleep a rich and proud city that God punished for refusing alms to a beggar. It is one of the most told legends of the comarca and is known in many variants, collected by Urbano Santana in 1931, by the oral tradition of Castelaus and Cardeita and by scholars of the drowned city ^[1][2][3].

The tale

Where the lagoon later lay, there once stood a city called Antioquía, the greatest and richest in Galicia. Its inhabitants lived in plenty, oppressed the people of the surrounding lands and showed charity to no one ^[1][3].

God decided to punish it, but Jesus first wished to test whether there was a just person in it. He went down to the city dressed as a beggar and went from door to door asking for alms for the love of God. From the first house to the last no one gave him anything; they did not even say «God help you» ^[1].

As he was leaving, sad, passing an oak grove, he saw a poor little house with its door half closed. Inside, a little old woman was warming herself by a fire that gave more smoke than heat. Jesus asked her for alms and she bade him come in: she sat him by the fire, milked the goat she had, gave him a bowl of milk and a piece of cornbread and laid him in her own bed while she slept on the floor ^[1][3][6].

At dawn, Jesus called the old woman to see what had become of Antioquía. Where the city had stood there now stretched an enormous lagoon, and no one had been saved but her ^[1]. Some versions say this happened on the morning of Saint John, after the cock crowed, and that only the old woman’s house was left dry ^[4].

The signs that remain

The legend does not end with the flood. On the morning of Saint John, when the first ray of sun strikes the water, the church bell tower can be glimpsed on the bottom; and on Christmas Eve, at midnight sharp, the cocks of the sunken city can be heard crowing ^[1][6]. Elixio Rivas Quintas, according to the Galipedia, adds that what shows on Saint John’s day is the cock that crowned the tower, and that in winter the strokes of the submerged bells are heard ^[3].

Variants from A Limia

• Cardeita (Sandiás). Urbano Santana, a resident of Sandiás, wrote in 1931 in the magazine Nós the version from the place of Cardeita, the one closest to the meadow. There the alms are given by a family, whom God orders to leave the city without looking back. One of them looks behind and turns to stone. Later, when people passed that spot with their cattle, the animals bellowed before the stone, until it was taken to the convent of Trandeiras. The old people of Cardeita dug in the meadow and said they had found «a beam, an old pot, a well with steps» ^[2]. Santana also tells that a certain Uncle Rató das Pegas brought back from America some books of treasures and that, guided by them, the neighbours dug in search of «riches and enchantments» ^[2].
• Two cities. Rivas Quintas speaks of two cities, Antioquía and Antioca, and places them in the Poza do Bión or the Pozo da Vaca, within Antela ^[3].
• The founding king. The Galipedia records the tradition that King Antiochus founded it near Xinzo de Limia ^[3].
• The cock. Another explanation says the punishment was for the inhabitants’ idolatry of a cock; Castro Pérez and García Valdeiras record it in the Lethes notebooks (1999), according to Rafael Adalid’s research on the legends of A Limia ^[5].
• Castelaus (Vilar de Santos). A woman told Adalid that bells were heard on Saint John’s night and in winter, and that beams had appeared in the water ^[5].
• Bóveda (Vilar de Barrio). Into the «Moors’ holes» of Bóveda went a hen with twelve chicks; eleven came out in different places, and one of them in the city of Antioquía ^[8].
• Modern version. A 2023 blog tells, without citing sources, that a Gaulish chieftain who was going to conquer it spent the night in the Sandiás Tower and that at dawn the city was gone; inside would live «wizards in the form of fish» ^[7].

A legend from all of Galicia

The city punished for lack of charity is a common theme in Galician oral tradition: there are similar stories in Valverde or Lucerna, in Beira beneath the lagoon of Cospeito, or at the lagoon of Carucedo, in El Bierzo ^[3]. In A Limia, moreover, the myth served to explain the lagoon itself, which at one time was about seven kilometres long and six wide according to Galicia Encantada ^[2], and even the name of a stone taken to Trandeiras. To learn about the real lagoon and its drainage, see Lagoa de Antela.

Read more

• Legends of A Limia
• The apparition at Trandeiras and the army of King Arthur
• The legends of the Sandiás Tower, where the lagoon is born from a hammer
• Legends of Vilar de Barrio
• Concello of Sandiás · Parish of Sandiás

Sources

1. «Outra lenda da lagoa de Antela», Galicia Encantada. https://galiciaencantada.com/lenda.asp?cat=4&id=1129
2. Urbano Santana, «Resume xeneral de folk-lore de Sandiás», Nós nº 89, 90 e 93 (1931); reproducido en «Antioquía (1)», Galicia Encantada (remitido por Xavier Feixoo), https://galiciaencantada.com/lenda.asp?cat=4&id=1015, e reeditado en A Torre do Castro nº 8 (Concello de Sandiás), http://issuu.com/torredocastro/docs/revistaatorredocastro82014
3. «Antioquía (lenda)», Galipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), con bibliografía de E. Rivas Quintas, A Limia: Val da Antela e Val do Medo (Deputación de Ourense, 1985). https://gl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioqu%C3%ADa_(lenda)
4. «A Casa da Lagoa da Antela e a ruta das Areeiras de Sandiás», Fronteira esquecida Limia-Lima (bibliografía: X. L. Martínez Carneiro, Antela, a memoria asolagada, Xerais, 1997). https://fronteiraesquecida.eu/gl/fichas/a-casa-da-lagoa-da-antela-e-a-ruta-das-areeiras-de-sandias/
5. Rafael José Adalid Rodríguez, «Contos, lendas e mitos da auga na Limia e pequenas achegas», Revista Galicia Encantada nº 16 (2020), pp. 5–6 (cita a A. Balboa Salgado, Lethes 8, 2006, e X. Taboada Chivite, «Las leyendas de la laguna de Antela», Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos XXIV, 1969). https://galiciaencantada.com/lenda.asp?cat=11&id=2886
6. «Lendas da Lagoa de Antela e da Limia», xinzodelimia.eu. Wayback (01-01-2008): https://web.archive.org/web/20080101084056/http://www.xinzodelimia.eu:80/lendas_da_lagoa.htm
7. Susi Suárez, «Areeiras da Limia», Descubre Cada Día, 25-04-2023. https://www.descubrecadadia.com/2023/04/areeiras-da-limia.html
8. «Miradoiro de Bóveda (área recreativa)», Fronteira esquecida Limia-Lima. https://fronteiraesquecida.eu/gl/fichas/miradoiro-de-boveda-area-recreativa/