“Alá enriba está Bande/ coma unha estampa antiga/ dibuxada non aire./ Pendurada do vento,/Bande dás verdes corgas/ cinguidas de silencio (…)”

Perhaps there are no more beautiful words than those of the poet to describe, with a feather float, a municipality where the waters of the Limia River hide and reveal the vestiges of history at its economic whim.

A history that places us suddenly in the times of Vespasian and his "legio septima gémina", who settled there to direct the construction of the Via Nova between the imperial cities of Braga and Astorga.

From a story that takes us back to the origins of the Christianization of Gallaecia, through San Torcuato, the disciple of the Apostle Santiago, whose relics found rest and comfort in Santa Comba de Bande, before landing, after a miracle, in Celanova.

But Bande has other waters, too, that invite to leisure and rest. The calm waters of the Prin invite you to fish and then to sleep in the reservoir. And the warm waters of O Baño, which helped to make Portoquintela, at the time, a focus of commercial life on the road. That is, until the waters drank it.

Land that was once a county and that knew how to defend its interests by making democratic agreements in open council - when this word did not even exist - under the protective shade of a "carballo".