rOutE 9 sarela RIVER

The Sarela River is a tributary of the Sar. It is born at the foot of Mount Pedroso, in the parish or hamlet of La Peregrina. It runs for 10 km around the city of Santiago to the east.  In its appeal it crosses the districts of La Peregrina, Vista Alegre, San Paio and Vidán. The place of Puente Vieja da Rocha flows into the Sar River.
The banks of the Sarela have been, since ancient times, an intensely humanized space, and until a few years ago it was of great importance for the economy of Compostela. Documentary sources highlight the relevance of this river as a place of passage, as the main agricultural producer of the city and as an industrial focus of the incipient capitalism of the period between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth.
In the section between the Archbishop’s bridge (today O Carme de Abaixo) and the mouth of the Sar in Vidán, the banks of the Sarela have been a succession of windmills since medieval times. On the course of the Sarela, today, we can see mills, remains of reservoirs, factories in ruins or transformed into houses, washhouses, fountains and small bridges.