Santa María de Xunqueira de Espadañedo

Santa María de Xunqueira de Espadañedo was founded in 1150 as an Augustinian convent and passed to the Cistercian Order in 1170. The nearby Montederramo monastery, which was a filiation of the primary abbey of Clairvaux, became the mother monastery.

In 1546 the monastery joined the Castilian Cistercian Congregation. The government's dissolution of the monastery in 1835 brought the end of the monastery.

The Romanesque church has three naves and three semicircular apses.

Carved capitals are not typical for a Cistercian monastery, which is usually very simple and plain. Bernhard von Clairvaux, the "mastermind" behind the expansion of the Cistercians, was strictly against any figurative decoration of portals, capitals and cloisters because it distracted the observer from prayer.

So the capitals here may date back to the time of the Augustinians who erected the church.