Chief town of Valdeorras, in the Sil valley (Ourense), territory of the ancient Gigurri with Roman gold mining. The settlement grew up beside the ferry that crossed the river towards Viloira and gradually gained importance over the neighbouring vila do Castro, the former seat of jurisdiction.
vines already dominant in the district in the 18th century (text of 1770); phylloxera 1885 and replanting with José Núñez (1858-1932); priory of Xagoaza 12th-13th centuriesDon Pepito de Viloira, the doctor who cured the vines
At the end of the 18th century an Enlightenment writer noted that Valdeorras lived “with more hunger than thirst”: the vine, thanks to the quality of its wine, had been taking land from cereal. In 1885 phylloxera came down the Bibei and devastated the valley. Then José Núñez Núñez appeared, a doctor born in Viloira (O Barco) in 1858 who had graduated in Madrid in 1882, and whom the locals called don Pepito de Viloira. He travelled to Logroño to study the remedies being tested in Europe and, with other pioneers of the district, grafted the local varieties onto American rootstocks on his estates at Viloira, bringing forward the recovery of the Galician vineyard by decades. A committed republican, he turned down the Order of Isabella the Catholic. Nearby, in Xagoaza, the old Templar priory of the 12th and 13th centuries now houses a godello bodega.
Alive today: O Barco is the capital of the district of the DO Valdeorras, created in 1945 and now famous for the revival of godello begun in 1974. In the old monastery of Xagoaza, Bodegas Godeval has been working since 1986, and in the town the old Jesús Nazareno cooperative, now Vinos Barco, is still active.