The Provincial Council of Ourense will sign in the coming days the service contract for the identification and digital cataloguing of the cultural and heritage history in the Limia-Lima river basin for the Portuguese-, in the framework of the cross-border collaboration project “Fronteira Esquecida”.
The initiative aims to “the recovery, conservation and development of a joint historical account of the territory that encompasses all the chambers and municipalities of the basin, from its source in Monte Talariño in Sarreaus to its mouth in the Atlantic, in the Portuguese town of Viana do Castelo”, underline sources from the provincial body.
For the accomplishment of this inventory of the cultural heritage of the cross-border basin, the awarded company will have to carry out a work of field along the 108 kilometres of length (41 kilometres in Galicia and 67 by Portugal) in which the river crosses 15 municipalities, 11 from Ourense (Sarreaus, Xinzo de Limia, Sandiás, Vilar de Santos, Rairiz de Veiga, Porqueira, Bande, Muíños, Lobeira, Entrimo and Lobios) and 4 Portuguese (Arcos de Valdevez, Ponte da Barca, Ponte da Lima and Viana do Castelo).
The project will make it possible to draw up a census on the basis of which to promote a joint and varied tourist offer that includes everything from megalithic, castrexos and Roman sites to contemporary museums, centuries-old churches and shrines, castles, viewpoints, parks and recreational areas, as well as a wide range of bridges, pools, reservoirs and waterfalls distributed over an area of 2,506 square kilometres, of which 1,326 (53%) are located in Spain and 1,180 (47%) in Portugal.
New construction and refurbishment
The provincial institution plans to catalogue an average of five monumental references per municipality in an area that has several figures of environmental protection, including the Baixa Limia-Serra do Xurés Natural Park and the Peneda-Gerês National Park, which together make up the Gerês-Xurés Cross-border Biosphere Reserve.
The cross-border project “Fronteira Esquecida”, of which the Provincial Council of Ourense is the main beneficiary, is 75% co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under the Interreg V A Spain Portugal (POCTEP) 2014-2020 programme. In addition to various studies and cataloguing, this project includes on-site actions such as the development of a path to complete the walk around the As Conchas reservoir in Muíños and the refurbishment of a fishermen’s shelter in Bande.
On the border between these two municipalities, the repair of the old Soutelo Bridge is planned, whose collaboration agreement was signed last week by the Council of Bande and the Miño-Sil Hydrographic Confederation.
Source: La Región