“Associação Aldeias de Magaio” is an entity established to coordinate activities and to promote cultural, environmental, social and economic areas of the mountainous municipality of S. Pedro do Sul (villages of the Gralheira Mounts and the valley of the river Paiva), whose bodies are made up of members of local associations of members of several villages (Village, Candal, Póvoa of Leiras, Manhouce, Gamoal, Covas do Monte, Covas do Rio Fujaco, Bordosedo, Nodar, Sequeiros, Seven Springs, and Macieira Rompecilha).
Magaio The name was chosen for two reasons: First, Hill magaio corresponds to the old name for Hill S. Macarius place that is part of the collective imagination of all the villages around it, the annual pilgrimage and festival that happens there on the last Sunday of July. Moreover, magaio was a Celtic god, a deity that meant naturalist who nourishes, that it creates. A great and inspiring metaphor for an initiative that aims to help promote the sustainability of mountain villages.
The territory formed by all the villages that are within the Villages Association magaio largely shares many of the problems that characterize the rural areas of southern countries of Europe, depopulation, lack of alternative employment, threat of loss of the tangible and intangible heritage etc. ..
However, there is a series of components that differentials are the main potential to be taken into account in preparing the draft. On the one hand, one with great strength of traditional activities linked to agriculture and livestock, mountain and traditional architecture, which gives the village as a whole an authentic nature of hard to find in other areas.
Moreover, the country managed to keep the pride of belonging amongst their people which the population is aged less than usual in other areas.
Finally, the area has hardly been the subject of intervention to economic diversification through tourism attached to the natural and cultural heritage, which provides an exceptional starting point to achieve a unique design, based on a model of endogenous development, innovative and sustainable. A project to collect the improvement of previous experiences and learn from mistakes and problems that were found in them.
The Association of Villages magaio is mainly inherited or activities in the project root, or Binaural / Center Nodar Artist Residency, which together form the core of their projects and initiatives, as well as other events organized in various villages the members. It should be noted that as a coordinating body and promotion of events, the association is not intended to subsitute the initiative of members of several villages, so the ultimate responsibility of business is still fundamentally the associations members.
The idea behind the “Association magaio Villages” is that people themselves are the villages a better knowledge of its landscape, its history, its memory, its traditions, so if they manage to combine this knowledge as a basis for to organize activities able to design more actively their valences.
The challenge today to these isolated villages is to be an active part of a development model that considers the landscape (natural and rural) and indigenous culture as a priceless heritage and endowed with economic value that can be tapped and reversed for whom centuries take care of this heritage, or are the rural communities themselves.
In short, it is therefore urgent that the mountain villages of S. Pedro do Sul work together with greater critical mass and strategic direction (not an ad hoc basis), drawing for that the valences of the different human villages (both those familiar with the territory and traditions, as a new generation of people with varied skills and complementary).
Is beginning a new phase in the life of the most remote villages and isolated from the municipality of S. Pedro do Sul!
