Places
to visit
PENHA GARCIA
Half-way in the road between Termas de Monfortinho and Monsanto, by the right side, we have Penha Garcia. A long time ago Penha Garcia was a very important village, due to its situation. King D. Sancho I ordered the construction of the castle of Penha Garcia, in the 12th century.
Each stone and each
corner has a story to tell, whether about fighting for the land, whether about
the devotion to God.
In the Principal Church, reconstructed recently, you may see vestiges from the previous church that appear in drawings dated 1515. Inside the church a rare Gothic image, in "stone of Ançã", - Senhora do Leite, with an inscription that permits to date it: 1469.
At Penha Garcia we may see some old customs and traditions: the "madeiro" at Christmas, the bonfires of S. João, the slaughter of the pig and the "janeiras" - after Christmas, the inhabitants go along the streets singing popular songs. Attempting to preserve and recollect these old customs and traditions, the village carries out from three to three years, since August 1983, the ethnographic week called «Old Penha Garcia». The program is vast.
The location of
Penha Garcia, in the peak of the mountain range, with a vast vision of the lands
from Portugal and Spain, gave it a war place statute. Another thing that should
have contributed for the permanence, during centuries, of human communities,
should have been the golden mines at river Ponsul.
At Penha Garcia, in
the rocks, you may observe many fossils with around 490 millions years. In those times the continents had a
completely peculiar location, forming a super continent named Gondwana. In
these waters lived Trilobites, extincted around 250 millions years ago. The
Trilobites dominated the seas, and needed to go for sustenance. These marks of
activity in the sediments were preserved in the rocks that were formed
subsequently. The investigators that are dedicated to the study of these
structures, named "icnofósseis", a kind of fossils. People of the village call it "The
painted snakes". You may see lots of forms called "Cruziana". The "icnofósseis"
of Penha Garcia were described, for the first time, in 1886, by the
Portuguese geologist Nery Delgado.
Penha Garcia deserves a visit. I' sure.
