Directions Pena dos Castros
It is a singular space with several unique granite rock formations, and also the spot where the sword of Mouruás, known as the Galician Excalibur, was found.
Immense boulders worthy of the name A Raíña or A Moura form part of this group, and some even have stairs carved in them. The most famous among them is without a doubt A Pastora, a pair of rocks that used to form a shelter, but were dynamited in 1967 to obtain stone for the construction of the road to San Xoán de Río.
During the blast, a 3,000-year-old Bronze Age (11th-10th BC) sword was ejected and landed in front of the workers. It was delivered to the Civil Guard Headquarters, who reported its discovery to the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Ourense, which took charge of its study and conservation.
The bronze sword weighs 820 grams and measures 68.5 cm in length by 4.5 cm maximum width at the blade and 5.7 cm at the guard. It is split into two fragments and consists of a long double-edged blade and a tripartite openwork hilt. It is typologically considered a Late Bronze Age II artefact and belongs to the group of ‘pistilform-blade’ swords.
The circumstances of the find suggest that it must have been intentionally hidden in a crevice in the rock, possibly also for funerary purposes and, at the same time, to control a strategic crossing point, according to Ruiz-Gálvez's interpretation. Its concealment would therefore respond to the same intention as its deposition in the augas: it is a public act of succession/competition for power, through the amortisation of an object of social value, of a symbol of rank that would distinguish the pre-eminence of local hierarchs, in societies where the nature of power is not institutionalised. Not unlike King Arthur's gesture of wrenching the sword free from the stone, it is a public act of legitimisation of his ascension to the royal office.