Galicia road trip: from Santiago to the Costa da Morte

Everything logically starts in Santiago: the international airport is well connected, every rental company is represented, and the listed old town deserves a full day before hitting the road — the cathedral and its Portico of Glory, the interlocking squares, and the permanent spectacle of pilgrims completing their Camino on the Praza do Obradoiro. That flow is no anecdote: the work of Rubén Lois González on the contemporary renewal of the Way of St James documents how this revival, begun in the 1990s, turned the pilgrimage into a major tourism and identity phenomenon for all of Galicia (study available on Google Scholar: scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Lois+Gonzalez+Camino+de+Santiago+contemporary+renewal+pilgrims+tourists+territorial+identities).

The Galician road trip is in fact the natural continuation of the Camino: tradition has pilgrims carry on to Cape Fisterra — the Ancients' “end of the world” — to symbolically burn their walking clothes facing the ocean. By car, that continuation becomes the first stage of a loop: head west, towards the coast that gave the trip its name.

The “Coast of Death” owes its name to the shipwrecks that litter its reefs, and it has kept that rugged beauty: from Muros to Camariñas, the coastal road strings together granite villages, deserted swell-battered beaches and lighthouses set on bare headlands. The stops that matter: the Ézaro waterfall, where the Xallas river plunges straight into the ocean — an extremely rare sight in Europe —, Cape Fisterra and its lighthouse (90 km from Santiago), the Virxe da Barca sanctuary at Muxía, perched on the rocks facing the open sea, and Camariñas, capital of bobbin lace. Allow two to three nights for this coast, sleeping in Fisterra or Muxía for the sunsets.

This coast also has a recent history that explains the Galicians' fierce attachment to their shoreline: the wreck of the tanker Prestige, in 2002, oiled precisely these shores. A study by María Loureiro and her colleagues, published in the journal Ecological Economics, quantified the costs and compensation claims linked to the disaster — one of the most expensive in European maritime history (study available on Google Scholar: scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Loureiro+Prestige+oil+spill+Ecological+Economics). Twenty years on, the coast has recovered its purity, and percebes — the goose barnacles that fishermen tear from wave-battered rocks at genuine risk to their lives — remain the emblematic delicacy to try on the spot.

Heading north via A Coruña — its Tower of Hercules, a Unesco-listed Roman lighthouse, has watched over the Atlantic for nineteen centuries —, the coast grows wilder still. Cape Ortegal and San Andrés de Teixido, a pilgrimage hamlet clinging to the cliff, precede the literal high point of the trip: the Vixía Herbeira cliffs, dropping more than 600 m into the ocean — among the highest in continental Europe —, skirted by a spectacular little panoramic road between Cariño and Cedeira.

Further east, on the Cantabrian coast, Praia As Catedrais (Cathedrals Beach) lines up its gothic stone arches sculpted by the sea: the visit must be at low tide — check the tide tables before scheduling the stop — and access is capped in summer and at Easter by a free online booking system run by the Xunta de Galicia. It's one of the circuit's two bookings to take seriously; reserve as soon as your dates are known.

Southern Galicia changes mood: the Rías Baixas, wide sheltered estuaries, farm mussels on bateas, grow albariño vines on pergolas and keep villages full of hórreos — those stone granaries on stilts of which Combarro, on the Pontevedra ría, lines up the finest seafront collection. Pontevedra itself, an exemplary pedestrianised old town, and Cambados, capital of albariño, each deserve a stroll; the region's family wineries are easy to visit, glass of Atlantic white wine included.

The southern jewel has to be earned: the Cíes Islands, closing off the Vigo ría, shelter Rodas beach — regularly ranked among the world's finest — within the Atlantic Islands National Park. Access is by boat only, from Vigo, Cangas or Baiona, with a daily visitor quota and a mandatory prior authorisation in high season: it's the circuit's second early booking. A full day on site, lighthouse trails and turquoise water included, ideally concludes the loop before the return to Santiago (about 100 km from Vigo by motorway).

The full loop represents 800 to 1,000 km depending on detours: seven days give a dense version, ten days the comfortable one with the Cíes Islands and real pauses. Galician roads are excellent and quiet outside August; only the AP-9, the motorway that forms the region's north-south spine, is tolled — the parallel national roads, slower, cross in exchange a landscape of eucalyptus, hamlets and rías that is part of the trip. In towns, park at peripheral car parks: the historic centres of Santiago and Pontevedra are pedestrian.

Calendar-wise, Galicia is oceanic and green for good reasons: it rains often outside summer. May-June and September offer the best balance — superb light, mild temperatures, beaches enjoyable without the August crowds, when all of Spain heads to this coast for cool air. One last table tip: here, pulpo á feira, percebes and the rías' shellfish make up one of Europe's finest maritime cuisines, at prices that make you forget Brittany — book for dinner in the fishing villages, the good spots are small.