Cortecadela had been empty for more than a decade when José Luis Pombar came back to it. A twelfth-century hamlet in Nogueira de Ramuín, on the Ourense side of the Sil, it had slipped into total abandonment around 2002 — the houses left to the weeds, the last residents gone. Pombar was born in one of them. He spent the years in between somewhere else entirely: Mexico first, then Alicante, then a long run in telephony and technology and the accumulated stress that eventually sent him looking for what he calls a mental refuge.
He found it in the village he’d left. In 2014 he returned and started keeping goats where the monks of Santo Estevo once kept theirs, on hills he insists were always made for the animal. The cheese he makes there — Monte Ceo, raw goat’s milk turned the same morning it’s drawn — is the part people notice first. But it’s almost the smaller project. The larger one is the hamlet itself, which he means to bring back as a rural hotel, animals and all.
Q. Tell us who you are, in your own words — and how you ended up here.
I’m José Luis Pombar. I keep goats and cattle in the Ribeira Sacra and we make goat’s cheese, only that. Before this I did other things — tourism, telephony, technology. I returned from Mexico in 2002, went to Alicante, and by 2014 I was very stressed and looking for what I’d call a mental refuge. I was born here, so it seemed important to do something for my own land. That’s what I’m doing.
Q. Back when you were abroad, how did you describe this place to people who’d never seen it?
The Ribeira Sacra is my mother’s soul — my alma materna. I’ve been in love with it since before I started going around the world at sixteen, above all the part around Nogueira de Ramuín, which for me is what gives the territory its value: Santo Estevo, and the most beautiful stretch of the canyon. What this place has that I found nowhere else is that tie to the ancestral, to the spiritual, to our own people, to those who came before us. When you’re born somewhere you see it differently from a traveller. It’s a place for hiding, for retreat, for thinking.
Q. You give a lot of credit to the monastery.
The Ribeira Sacra is what it is thanks to what it has, but it owes a great deal to the Parador de Santo Estevo. If we hadn’t been lucky enough to have a monastery like that one, now a parador, this territory wouldn’t have half the importance it has today — because the politicians wouldn’t have turned their eyes toward us if it hadn’t existed.
We’re recovering something that already existed. The monks of Santo Estevo knew these hills were made for goats. Their stables were in this village, and from here they grazed their animals.
Q. What makes the cheese itself different?
It’s unique in Galicia: raw goat’s milk, free-grazing milk. The goats are out on the hill all day, brought in at dusk to be milked, let out again in the morning. We want to share that product — with the visitor, with the day-to-day customer. The hard part isn’t making it, it’s making it known. In Galicia goat’s cheese has never been valued, because there’s so much cow’s milk here that people are used to the cow product, and it has nothing to do with the goat one. Positioning it has cost a great deal. We sell in the shops around here and at the fairs, and yes, you can arrange a visit.
Q. And the hamlet itself — that’s the bigger plan.
This village dates from the twelfth century and fell into total abandonment in 2002. We have a beautiful recovery project, and we mean to start next year — turning it into a rural hotel, with the added value of being surrounded by animals, as a rural hotel should be, and with a flagship product, the cheese. The hard part there is the financing, and the bureaucracy behind it. We’re not the first to say so.
Q. If you could change how the Ribeira Sacra is seen, what would it be?
I wouldn’t change much — there’s no need to change anything. If I were a politician I’d put the exact opposite in value to what they’re putting now. They lean hard into mass tourism, and this isn’t mass tourism, it’s quality tourism. Mass tourism destroys wherever it goes, and we can’t allow this to be destroyed — not for us, but for the generations to come. It has to be cared for. What the Ribeira Sacra lacks, lately, is commitment: from the people who live here, and from the politicians. Less is more, and they don’t always understand that.
Fire Round
A place
A night at the Parador de Santo Estevo.
A dish
Monte Ceo goat’s cheese, before anything else.
A word
Enxebre — Galician for something authentic, unadulterated, wholly its own.
A misconception
That you can see it in a weekend. The Ribeira Sacra is contemplation, silence, slowness — it takes time.
All photos courtesy of Monte Ceo. Not for reproduction without written permission.
