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A Rapa das Bestas is a centuries-old Galician tradition in which villagers round up wild horses from the mountains, cut their manes and tails by hand, treat them for parasites, and release them back to freedom. Held every first weekend of July in the village of Sabucedo (Pontevedra, Spain), it is one of Galicia’s oldest living festivals and has been officially declared a Festival of International Tourist Interest.

If there’s one thing worth talking about in Galicia during the summer, it’s festivals — and here, there’s no shortage of them. A Rapa das Bestas in Sabucedo is a celebration rooted in our most ancestral traditions, one you experience with your whole body: the smell of mountain brush and horse sweat clinging to your skin.

Every first weekend of July, a tiny village of barely 200 residents in the heart of the Tabeirós-Terra de Montes region becomes the stage for one of the oldest, most authentic, and most awe-inspiring traditions in Galicia.

At Rutas Meigas, we’ve always invited you to explore the Galician landscape — its trails, its forests, and its people. Few experiences capture the spirit of this land better than A Rapa das Bestas, a ritual where humans and wild horses meet, hand to hide, in a dance as old as Galicia itself.

What is A Rapa das Bestas?

The name “As Bestas” may ring a bell if you’ve seen The Beasts, Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s award-winning film — though here, we’re talking about horses, not the movie’s plot. A Rapa das Bestas, literally “the shearing of the beasts,” is the name given to one of the most distinctive traditions in Galician folk culture.

The ritual involves rounding up wild horses that live freely in the mountains, driving them into a circular stone enclosure called a curro, cutting their manes and tails, deworming them, treating any wounds, and marking them — before releasing them back into the wild.

This isn’t a show staged for tourists. It’s a centuries-old livestock management ritual that has evolved into one of Galicia‘s most recognizable cultural markers. The Greek geographer Strabo described, over 2,000 years ago, how the peoples of the northwestern Iberian Peninsula rounded up their wild horses with shouts and dramatic gestures. That same scene, with a few modern nuances, still plays out today.

The stars of the Rapa das Bestas are purebred Galician horses (caballo de pura raza gallega) and mixed Galician-breed horses — small, hardy, and extraordinarily resilient animals that have survived in the wild for centuries across Galicia’s hills. Their role goes far beyond folklore: by grazing on gorse, heather, and scrubland, these wild horses play a key role in wildfire prevention by keeping Galicia’s mountains clear of overgrowth. Caring for them, controlling their population, and keeping them healthy is, at its core, the real reason the rapa exists — and in an era of climate change, that role has never been more important.

A tradition celebrated across Galicia

While Sabucedo is by far the most famous, A Rapa das Bestas isn’t an isolated phenomenon. In fact, some of the oldest capitals in Santiago de Compostela Cathedral already depict a medieval aloitador (horse wrestler) grappling hand-to-hand with a horse.

Today, more than a dozen curros across the Galician countryside — mostly in the mountain ranges of southern Pontevedra — hold their own version of the rapa between spring and summer:

• Curro de Valga and Curro de Torroña, in Oia (Pontevedra) — May and June
• Curro de Mougás, also in Oia — mid-June
• Curro de Morgadáns and Curro de San Cibrán, in Gondomar, on the slopes of Mount Galiñeiro
• Curro da Capelada, in Cedeira (A Coruña)
• Curro Campo do Oso, in Mondoñedo (Lugo)
• Curro de Candaoso, in Viveiro (Lugo) — also officially declared of Tourist Interest
• Curro de Amil, in Moraña, and Curro de Monte Castelo, in Cotobade — held in July

A Rapa das Bestas reflects the communal spirit of Galicia‘s villages, respect for an animal that roams free nearly all year, and an awareness of preserving a bond between people and mountain that dates back at least to the Iron Age.

Still, none of these other curros has reached the fame, scale, or symbolic weight of Sabucedo’s.

Sabucedo: the Origin of a legend over three centuries old

The parish of San Lourenzo de Sabucedo, part of the municipality of A Estrada in the province of Pontevedra, near Santiago de Compostela, is a tiny place — barely six square kilometers — that sees its population multiply many times over during the first weekend of July, as visitors arrive from across Galicia, Spain, and around the world.

Sabucedo’s rapa has ancestral roots, and like most age-old traditions, its exact origin blurs the line between history and legend. Oral tradition tells of a plague that devastated the region centuries ago, when two sisters promised San Lourenzo, the parish’s patron saint, that they would donate two of their horses if the disease came to an end. The plague subsided, the promise was kept, and since the Church could own animals but not care for them day to day, local villagers took on the task themselves — gathering, marking, and tending to the horses once a year, while letting them roam free the rest of the time.

The earliest written records describing a rapa similar to today’s ceremony date back to 1682, making Sabucedo’s tradition one of the oldest continuously living customs in all of Galicia.

The Curro de Sabucedo: Galicia’s purest Rapa

What sets the Curro de Sabucedo apart from every other is how the confrontation between human and horse unfolds. No ropes, lassos, or sticks are used here. Instead, the aloitadores — young men, and increasingly young women, from Sabucedo — face the animals using only their bare hands and a knowledge of horses passed down through generations. It’s likely the only curro in Galicia where the struggle happens entirely hand-to-hand, body-to-body.

The current enclosure was built in the 18th century, adjoining the parish church itself. Its stone walls and semicircular stands, arranged like a small amphitheater, let hundreds of spectators watch the action up close without interfering — a piece of vernacular architecture that has served the same purpose for three centuries.

A Baixa: the search in the mountains

It all begins before dawn, when the people of Sabucedo climb Montouto mountain to locate the horse herds that have spent the year grazing freely. Guided by their deep knowledge of the terrain and the animals’ behavior, they slowly encircle the herds and, with patience and skill, drive them down toward the village.

O Curro: the hand-to-hand struggle

Once the wild horses are inside the enclosure, the festival reaches its climax. The aloitadores and aloitadoras work in small teams of three. Two of them handle the horse’s head, working to hold and subdue the animal, while the third controls the tail to avoid kicks. It’s an intense, full-body struggle — equal parts strength and technique — that ends with the cutting of the horse’s mane and tail, deworming, and a health check. The youngest foals are separated first to keep them safe during the wrestling.

Os Aloitadores & as Aloitadoras: guardians of a living tradition

Being an aloitador in Sabucedo is a role passed down through generations — one you grow up watching in a father, an uncle, or a neighbor, and one that demands an intimate understanding of horse behavior that only comes with years of experience. Each edition of the rapa pays tribute to these men and women, the true guardians of a tradition they carry, quite literally, on their shoulders, generation after generation.

A Rapa das Bestas de Sabucedo: Festival Program

The celebration has been officially declared a Festival of International Tourist Interest.

The program unfolds over four days:

• Day 1: A tribute gala honoring the aloitadores and aloitadoras
• Day 2: Mass in honor of San Lourenzo, followed by A Baixa — the trip up the mountain to round up the horses
• Saturday: The horses arrive in Sabucedo, and the first major curro session takes place in the afternoon
• Sunday: The experience repeats, typically with a midday session and another at dusk
• Monday: The festival closes with the final curro session and the horses’ return to the mountains

Between curro sessions, the whole village turns into one big street party — as only Galicia can do it — with parades, traditional bagpipe (gaita) music, concerts as part of the Rapasons festival, and food and craft stalls lining the streets.

Each edition brings together more than 600 wild horses across roughly 14 herds — a display of strength and community organization that’s as hard to match as it is to forget. A ticket is required to watch the curro sessions from the stands, so it’s worth planning ahead if you want to experience it up close.

Discover Galicia with Rutas Meigas

Galicia is full of places waiting to be discovered — more than you’d ever imagine.

Tabeirós-Terra de Montes is a land of forests, rivers, and villages, perfect for unhurried hiking and exploration, and it sits just a short distance from Santiago de Compostela.

Pairing the end of your Camino de Santiago with a visit to Sabucedo, exploring Padrón — one of the towns most closely tied to the Jacobean tradition — or hiking a route through the Serra do Barbanza, is the best way to understand why this land remains so deeply connected to its traditions.

Rutas Meigas | Specialists in Camino de Santiago and hiking in Galicia | rutasmeigas.com

Some trails don’t appear in mainstream travel guides. They don’t seek crowds or easy fame. Instead, they wait in quiet patience for the right traveller to find them. O Camiño do Monxe — the Monk’s Way — is exactly that kind of trail. A circular 144-kilometre hiking route through the heart of Galicia’s Ribeira Sacra, it stands as one of the most authentic and least-explored long-distance walking experiences in the whole of Spain.

At Rutas Meigas, we have spent years introducing travellers to Galicia beyond its most-walked paths. When we hand our guests the keys to O Camiño do Monxe, something invariably happens: they come back changed. Not metaphorically. This route carries an ancient pulse, a density of landscape and history, that leaves a mark on everyone who walks it.

What is O Camiño do Monxe?

O Camiño do Monxe was created by passionate local enthusiasts deeply committed to sharing the authentic soul of their land. The trail follows a network of ancient paths that predate the monasteries themselves, the Roman conquest and even the Iron Age hillforts that still crown the slopes of this extraordinary region. These are millennium-old tracks etched into the earth, connecting villages, farmland and sacred sites across a landscape that is profoundly, breathtakingly rural.

The route immerses hikers in the most genuine face of the Ribeira Sacra: dense oak and chestnut forests, steep riverbanks above deep river gorges, golden-stone Romanesque monasteries, medieval castles perched on vertiginous ridges and living villages where time seems to have stood still. A 144-kilometre journey divided into 7 stages of between 19 and 22 kilometres each, with moderate difficulty that makes it accessible to experienced hikers in good physical condition.

The route is circular, starting and finishing in Castro Caldelas, one of the most charming towns in the region. No need to coordinate two different arrival and departure points — the traveller returns to the same place they started from, completing a perfect circle both on the map and in the spirit.

Hiking the Ribeira Sacra: far more than a wine wegion

For many visitors, the Ribeira Sacra is synonymous with wine. And understandably so: the breathtaking terraced vineyards cascading vertically down to the canyons of the Sil and Miño rivers represent one of the most spectacular wine landscapes in all of Europe. But to reduce this comarca to its Mencía or Godello production would be an unforgivable oversight.

The Ribeira Sacra is, above all, sacred — as its very name declares. From the earliest centuries of Christianity, hermits and monks chose these steep valleys and impenetrable forests as places to withdraw from the world and build their spiritual communities. The result is an extraordinary concentration of Romanesque heritage without parallel anywhere in Spain: dozens of monasteries, churches, chapels and hermitages scattered across a geography that seems purpose-built for contemplation and retreat.

But the history of this land runs even deeper. Before the medieval monks came Rome. Before Rome, the Celtic hillfort peoples. And before them, a humanity that left its marks in stone and earth in ways we still do not fully understand. O Camiño do Monxe passes through all those layers, superimposing eras and cultures with every step.

The 7 Stages: a journey through time

Stage 1: Castro Caldelas – Fábrica da Luz

The first stage sets off from Castro Caldelas, dominated by its imposing medieval castle, and enters the Galician mountain landscape along rural paths through ancient chestnut trees. The highlight of this opening day is the passage through the ruins of the Monastery of San Paio de Abeleda, a medieval monastic complex steeped in history and wrapped in the deep silence of the Ribeira Sacra. The stage ends at the spectacular Pasarelas del Río Mao at the Fábrica da Luz, where wild nature and 20th-century industrial heritage create a combination of barely describable beauty.

Stage 2: Fábrica da Luz – Parada de Sil

The second stage unfolds alongside the great protagonist of the Ribeira Sacra: the Sil Canyon. The trail hugs the river for several kilometres, offering perspectives of the gorge that would justify the entire trip on their own. The peak moment arrives at the Balcones de Madrid viewpoints, among the most breathtaking lookout points in all of Galicia, where the curves of the Sil disappearing between forest-covered mountains create an image impossible to forget. The stage also passes through the landscape surrounding the Monastery of Santa Cristina de Ribas de Sil, currently under restoration but still a place of powerful spiritual presence.

Stage 3: Parada de Sil – Santo Estevo

Arguably the most panoramic of all seven stages. The succession of viewpoints punctuating this stretch — Cotarro, Cabezoá, A Columna, Vilouxe, Pé do Home — turns this day’s walk into a continuous parade of privileged views over the Sil canyons. The stage finale at the Monastery of Santo Estevo is one of the most emotionally charged moments of the entire route: arriving at this magnificent Romanesque complex, today converted into a Parador de Turismo, after hours of walking through forests and stopping at miradores, produces a feeling that is genuinely unique.

Stage 4: Santo Estevo – Esgos

The fourth stage begins with a significant ascent from the monastery following the Natural Trail, which allows walkers to contemplate the Santo Estevo complex from above. The trail leads to the Cabeza de Meda wind farm and descends toward Esgos through open moorland landscapes. The undeniable highlight is the visit to the Monastery of San Pedro de Rocas, the oldest in the Ribeira Sacra and in all of Galicia, dating from the 6th century and partially excavated from the living rock. An archaeological and historical treasure that rewards all the time one can give it.

Stage 5: Esgos – Maceda

This stage connects the Ribeira Sacra with the high interior lands of Galicia, travelling along the Ribeira Sacra Natural Trail and arriving at the Monastery of Santa María de San Pedro de Espadanedo, where hikers can collect one of the most distinctive stamps on the entire route — wax-sealed in the medieval style. The day ends at the Castle of Maceda, a medieval fortress that commands the surrounding countryside with patrician authority.

Stage 6: Maceda – Montederramo

The penultimate stage leads the traveller to the spiritual heart of the entire route: the Monastery of Santa María de Montederramo, considered the most important monastery in the Ribeira Sacra. The trail crosses open mountain landscapes with spectacular panoramic views and passes through villages where rural Galician life continues with full authenticity. A demanding stage in certain sections, but extraordinarily rich in both landscape and emotional resonance.

Stage 7: Montederramo – Castro Caldelas

The final stage closes the circle, returning to Castro Caldelas. The path leaves from the Monastery of Montederramo and traverses forest and moorland landscapes through Romanesque chapels and hermitages, passing the Chapel of As Neves and culminating in the Monastery of San Juan de Camba before returning to the starting point. A finale that invites deep reflection on the complete journey — the landscapes, the monasteries and the silences the traveller now carries within them.

Why O Camiño do Monxe is unlike any other trail

At a time when many hiking routes have become backpacker motorways, O Camiño do Monxe represents something radically different. Here you won’t find queues at hostels, mass selfies at scenic spots or the sense of doing something already done by millions before you. This trail is still genuinely wild, in the very best sense of the word.

The signage, in certain sections, can be sparse or ambiguous, making a downloaded GPS track on your phone or dedicated device almost indispensable. But far from being a weakness, this is part of the appeal: O Camiño do Monxe demands attention, presence and real engagement with the terrain. It is not a trail to walk on autopilot. It is a trail that asks you to be fully awake.

The landscapes offer a variety and beauty that few routes in Spain can match: from the deepest river gorges on the Iberian Peninsula to the most silent mountain forests, through millennia-old vineyards, eternal-looking stone villages and Romanesque monuments that have been gazing at the Galician sky for centuries. Each stage has its own personality and offers radically different experiences.

Hiking the Ribeira Sacra with Rutas Meigas: your Journey, without the worry

Organising a 9-day, 144-kilometre journey through unfamiliar territory can be complex. That’s why at Rutas Meigas we offer a complete package so the traveller can focus exclusively on walking, discovering and enjoying.

O Camiño do Monxe with Rutas Meigas starts from €890 per person (price valid September to June; please contact us for July and August pricing). The package includes 9 days and 8 nights in private rooms with private bathrooms, bed and breakfast accommodation, luggage transfer between stages so you never have to carry a full pack, and the necessary transfers as marked in the itinerary. Everything organised so that the only effort required is the walk itself.

• 9 days / 8 nights in private room with private bathroom
• Breakfast included every morning
• Luggage transfer between stages
• Transfers as per itinerary
• Personalised attention and Rutas Meigas support throughout

Rutas Meigas is a travel agency specialised in hiking and the Camino de Santiago, based in Galicia. Our deep knowledge of the territory, combined with our network of carefully selected accommodations, allows us to offer a quality experience that goes far beyond simple logistics.

Who Is This Trail For?

O Camiño do Monxe is ideal for experienced multi-day hikers seeking something authentic, far from mass tourism. Moderate difficulty means it is accessible to people with reasonable fitness and hiking experience, but not to complete beginners. Stages of between 19 and 22 kilometres require stamina and solid footwear.

It is also a perfect route for lovers of historical heritage and Romanesque architecture, for those who find Galician nature and its unique forests to be something more than mere backdrop, and for travellers who value silence, authenticity and direct contact with local communities that keep their traditions alive. If you seek a trail where every step carries meaning and where the landscape is not merely beautiful but deeply evocative, O Camiño do Monxe is your route.

How to plan your Hiking the Ribeira Sacra with Rutas Meigas

If O Camiño do Monxe has sparked your interest, the next step is simple: contact Rutas Meigas team for a personalised proposal tailored to your dates and needs. You can reach us through our website, by phone or by email. Our team will advise you on the best season for the route, the equipment you’ll need, arrival logistics and all the practical details to make your Ribeira Sacra adventure truly perfect.

The ideal seasons for O Camiño do Monxe are spring and autumn, when the forests of the Ribeira Sacra display their most spectacular colours and walking temperatures are just right. Summer is also possible, though inland temperatures can be higher. Rain — Galicia’s inseparable companion — can appear at any time of year, so a good waterproof layer is always welcome.

Ready to walk O Camiño do Monxe? Rutas Meigas takes care of everything. Write to info@rutasmeigas.com or call us at +34 881 019 941.

Rutas Meigas | Specialists in Camino de Santiago and hiking in Galicia | rutasmeigas.com