Quiroga City Hall Ethnographic Museum

The Ethnographic Museum of the City of Quiroga is located on the ground floor of the Municipal Auditorium of Quiroga, on Real Street in the capital of the municipality.

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It opened its doors on March 24, 2007 with the illusion of investigating, recovering, gathering, exposing and therefore protecting the Cultural Heritage in all its dimensions.

Today the ethnographic collection of our Museum, composed of over 1000 pieces collected in the territory of the COUREL MOUNTAINS UNESCO GLOBAL GEOPARK, which brings together the municipalities of Folgoso do Courel, Ribas de Sil and Quiroga, is one of the most complete and interesting ethnographic collections in Galicia.

The contents of the Ethnographic Museum of Quiroga are related, on the one hand, with the four typical products of the Courel Mountains Geopark: wine, chestnut, oil and honey; on the other, with the four essential materials for the development of life in this environment: stone, iron, wood and textiles. The agriculture and livestock, the main room of the house which is the low kitchen and the pleasant unitary school of our villages, also have a prominent role.

In these facilities, you can also see for some time now, one of the famous cars of Salvador Ontiveros Álvarez and the magnificent printing press of the legendary El Derroche store.

All contents of this collection find its synthesis in the recreation of a traditional village of these mountains with the exhibition of the models that were the film sets of the Artefacto Production´s Galician animation film “O Apóstolo”, where stone, wood, iron, etc., find their place to facilitate the life of the people of this hard but grateful land.

Our halls

Honey

Sala Cultura do Mel do Museo Etnográfico

This product, which has always been very attached to the lands of the Geopark, did not stop evolving; production systems varied from the ancient cork oak barks to the modern multi-storeyed hives. They are presented in a very particular recreation of the unique circular beehives of stone which undreds of them decorate our mountains.

Chestnut

Chestnut trees are still raised in their gloomy forests giving splendor to our landscape. This space is dedicated to something as ours as the process of drying the chestnut and its evolution until it is clean and ready to consume throughout the year.

Wine

Sala da Cultura do Viño do Museo Etnográfico

The wine culture is historically related to the lowlands of the Courel Mountains, in the Sil river basin. In the room dedicated to this product, we can see the representation of a traditional winery with materials and utensils related to the whole wine cycle, from the care in the vineyard to the preparation of the brandy from the bagasse of the grape, once separated from the wine.

Oil

Oil is a unique product of the lands of the river Sil that, due to their special climate, where the authentic native oil of Galicia has been made for millenniums. One of the great challenges for the Ethnographic Museum of Quiroga was to have in its facilities the machinery of a traditional oil mill , where could tell the oil´s history of these lands.

The alpendre

It was one of the main rooms of the traditional house. In this section we can find the elements related to agriculture and livestock, activities that led to an important part of daily life on these lands in a not-so-distant past.

Wood

Sala do traballo da madera tradicional do Museo Etnográfico

The Museum collects the two main steps of woodworking. Removing it from the forest and further processing by the carpenters; boards were removed from the forest after harvesting with a sawing machine and cut out with a “machado”, the prepared tree trunk (squared and without branches or roots) was raised on top of the donkey, assisted by struts, saw men proceeded to saw it, with the air saw or the Portuguese saw, to obtain boards. Wooden planks that arrived to carpentries were transformed into all kinds of utensils, furniture, etc

Iron (Agapito Vila´s showroom)

Iron tradition was always magnificent in Courel Mountains; Fifteen forges supplied material to numerous existing smithies in the villages to obtain all kinds of tools and pieces of this precious material.

The kitchen below the bedroom

The kitchen below the bedroom is the heart of the traditional house, cooking place,the most important meeting point and the bedroom place of rest. We collect here a sample of the essential elements in these rooms

The school

The school was one of the latest additions to the exhibition of the Quiroga´s Ethnographic Museum. The recovery of several types of desks used in the old unitary schools of the territory, led to research in the villages searching the rest of the elements of the charming classrooms oin the early years of the twentieth century: blackboards, teacher's desk, maps, toys, books, coal stoves... which shaped everyday lives of our people at school, loved and hated to the same extent.

Textile industry

Textile industry also has an important tradition in the Geopark, especially in the mountain parishes. Wool and linen were worked on numerous looms such as the one exhibited at the Quiroga Museum, where the tradition of traditional weavers is kept alive since its opening.

The village

All the contents present in this collection have their synthesis in the recreation of a typical village of these mountains with the exhibition of the models that were decorated in the Galician animated film O Apóstolo, by Artefacto Producciones; where stone, wood, iron, etc., find their place to facilitate the life of the people of this hard but grateful land.

El Derroche store´s

The El Derroche store´s old printing: Fabrics, clothing, footwear and stationery were its strong points, but El Derroche had the first funeral home, the first tobacco shop, providing electrical equipment and sale of phytosanitary products, modern toys and, of course, the first and only printing press of the Region.