Otero Pedrayo and A Limia

Ramón Otero Pedrayo (Ourense, 5 March 1888 – Ourense, 10 April 1976), the Patriarch of Galician Letters, made A Limia one of his sources of inspiration as a writer, geographer and intellectual ^[1]. His vision joined landscape description, ethnographic knowledge and literature, and the Lagoa de Antela, now drained, has a place of its own in that imagination.

The 2026 tribute

In September 2026, the year that marked fifty years since his death (the Año Oteriano, or Otero Pedrayo Year), the area joined in the commemorations with two complementary sessions under the title «A Limia e a Lagoa de Antela no imaxinario literario e paisaxístico de don Ramón Otero Pedrayo» (A Limia and the Lagoa de Antela in the literary and landscape imagination of don Ramón Otero Pedrayo) ^[1]^[2].

At the Museo Etnográfico da Limia (Vilar de Santos): the literary view. After an introduction by Delfín Caseiro, president of the Board of the Museo da Limia, the speakers were ^[1]^[2]:

Paco López-Barxas, writer and critic, who presented the book Ramón Otero Pedrayo, arredor de si.
Patricia Arias Chachero, teacher and secretary of the Otero Pedrayo Foundation, on the links between don Ramón and A Limia.
Xosé Carlos Sierra Rodríguez, former director of the Ribadavia Ethnographic Museum, on Otero Pedrayo’s ethnographic view.

At the Lagoa de Antela Interpretation Centre (Sandiás): geography and landscape ^[1]^[2]:

Augusto Pérez Alberti, professor of Geography at the University of Santiago de Compostela, with «Otero Pedrayo e a paisaxe».
Xosé Benito Reza, writer and popularizer, former head of Natural Environment in Ourense and director general of Nature Conservation at the Xunta, who analysed the text «A memoria recuperada», recalled the project to rehabilitate the sand pits of A Limia and read an imaginary text of two Roman soldiers travelling along the Via Nova XVIII, from Bracara Augusta, through Limian territory and Sandiás.
Xosé Eduardo López Pereira, president of the Otero Pedrayo Foundation, with a biography of don Ramón, and María José Bravo Bosch, who presented her documentary Ramón Otero Pedrayo, dereito á paisaxe.

More than thirty people attended in Vilar de Santos and nearly seventy in Sandiás, and the Furgoteca Ourense Occidental brought a selection of Otero Pedrayo’s works to Sandiás ^[2].