Redondela

Right now in Redondela (as of October 2026)

• Parish albergue closed in winter: The albergue of the parish of Santiago is only open from late March to late September (as of August 2026). The public albergue Casa da Torre is open all year round.
• San Simón is a place of remembrance: Since 21 August 2026 the islands of San Simón and Santo Antón off the town have officially been a "Place of Democratic Memory". From 1936 to 1943 a prison camp of the Franco regime stood here.

How long to stay?

An afternoon is enough. Redondela is a small town you can get to know on a single stroll: the Casa da Torre, the church of Saint James and the two viaducts. There are no museums or major sights. Stay one night, but sort out your bed early, because that is exactly the problem here.

Redondela in Ninja numbers

• 2 routes, 1 town: In Redondela the Central Portuguese Way via Tui and the coastal variant via Vigo come together.
• 86 kilometres is the distance from here to Santiago.
• 8,604 pilgrims slept in the public albergue Casa da Torre in 2024.
• 26,974 pilgrims passed through the old town on the coastal variant between January and May 2025 alone.

Arriving: two routes, one destination

On the Central route you come from O Porriño, just under 16 kilometres; from Tui it is a good 31. After Mos there is a long climb to the Capela de Santiaguiño de Antas, the highest point of the day. Right after it, a Roman milestone stands by the path. After Saxamonde comes a steep descent that is hard on the knees, especially when wet. Then a stretch along the N-550, and you are in town. You pass the sixteenth-century Convento de Vilavella and walk under the Viaduto de Madrid, then along Rúa Pai Crespo to the public albergue in the Casa da Torre.

On the coastal variant you come from Vigo, 16 kilometres, along the water-supply path with views over the ría. After Cedeira the Camiño das Cardosas drops steeply, passes under the railway and finally follows the hard shoulder of the N-550 to the roundabout at the edge of town.

In brief: a village on the Roman road, a fishing town on the bay

Redondela grew together from two places. Vilavella lay on the Roman road between Tui and Pontevedra, the road you are walking today. Vilanova grew up from the thirteenth century as a fishing village on the bay. In the nineteenth century the railway arrived, and with it the two viaducts that gave the town its nickname. Today around 29,000 people live in the municipality.

Beneath the viaducts: what to see

Everything is close together in the small old town, and two things you will see even if you only go to the supermarket: the viaducts.

• The viaducts: The Viaduto de Madrid opened on 30 June 1876 and is almost 256 metres long. Exactly eight years later, on 30 June 1884, the Viaduto de Pontevedra followed, with metal piers. Both have been protected monuments since 1978, and Redondela calls itself the "Vila dos Viadutos" after them. On the Central route you walk under one as you arrive, and tomorrow you leave town under an arch of the other.
• Igrexa de Santiago: The parish church of the apostle stands in the middle of the old town, right on the Camino. It dates from the sixteenth century and is late Gothic. From late March to late September there is Mass with a pilgrim blessing here every evening at 20:00.
• Casa da Torre: The sixteenth-century house with the tower is now the public albergue and also a Camino information point. On the square in front of it, at Corpus Christi, the men perform the sword dance, which has been documented since the sixteenth century.

The dragon from the bay

Every year at Corpus Christi, Redondela defeats a dragon, the Coca. According to legend it lived in the sea by the island of San Simón, came into town, destroyed everything and carried off young girls, until the young sailors slew it. During the festival the Coca flees through the streets from the Virxe da Gabacha. Girls in white with little wings, the penlas, dance on the shoulders of women, and in front of the Casa da Torre around twenty men perform the sword dance to bagpipes and drums. The festival lasts four days, from the eve of Corpus Christi Thursday until Sunday. If you are here in June, ask about the date.

Food and drink

Redondela is the town of choco, the cuttlefish from the bay of San Simón. That is why the locals are called "choqueiros". On the second Sunday in May the town holds the Festa do Choco, with more than 30,000 visitors. If you like oysters, you don't have far to go: they grow in Arcade, a few kilometres further along the trail.

Honestly

• There aren't enough beds here. Because two routes meet, Redondela is a bottleneck. In 2025 hostels and guesthouses were full from Easter until October, and pilgrims set off from Tui at 06:00 to still get a bed. Book privately or sleep one stage before or after.
• The public albergue is small and strict. It takes no reservations, the door is locked at 22:00, and the kitchen has only a microwave. One Camino Ninja pilgrim queued at 11:30 in September 2026 and got the last bed.
• In and out along the main road. On both routes you walk the last stretch on the hard shoulder of the N-550, and tomorrow you cross it several times too. In Cesantes the crossing is considered dangerous.
• The descent from Santiaguiño is tough. After the long climb it drops steeply. Take short steps and use poles if you have them.

Where pilgrims sleep

• Albergue de peregrinos Casa da Torre: the Xunta's public albergue in a sixteenth-century house on Praza de Ribadavia, in the heart of the old town and right on the route. Pilgrims have slept here since 1999. It costs €10 including disposable bedding, takes no reservations and is open from 13:00 to 22:00; in the morning you must leave before 08:00 (as of August 2026). It is open all year. Figures for the number of beds vary, but there are only a few dozen.
• Albergue parroquial Santiago Apóstol: the parish albergue of Santiago on Rúa Telmo Bernárdez, right by the church. It has 30 beds, costs €14 to €17 and takes reservations. It is only open from late March to late September (as of August 2026).

There are also many private albergues in Redondela with dorms, mostly for €15 to €21, which you can book. Some are at the entrance to town, others in the old town or on the way out. Check where yours is before booking, so you don't have to walk back.

Ninja tips

• Arrive early or book: Pilgrims start queuing for the Casa da Torre in the late morning. If you arrive later, book a private place in advance.
• Fall back on Cesantes or Arcade: If Redondela is full, sleep in Cesantes, a good 2 kilometres further, or in Arcade, 7.5 kilometres. Coming from the Central side, O Porriño or Mos also work.
• Bring crockery or eat out: Several Camino Ninja pilgrims regret that the Casa da Torre kitchen has neither crockery nor cutlery.
• The evening blessing: From late March to late September there is Mass with a pilgrim blessing at 20:00 in the Igrexa de Santiago, right next to the parish albergue.
• Fill up with water in Mos: Between Mos and Santiaguiño there is hardly anywhere to stop. Fill your bottle there before the climb begins.

Practical tips for pilgrims

• Stamps: You are within the last 100 kilometres and need two stamps a day. The Casa da Torre is also a Camino information point.
• Laundry: At the Casa da Torre the washing machine costs €3, the dryer €1.50 (as of August 2026).
• Shopping for tomorrow: After Arcade there are no shops and hardly any bars until Pontevedra. Stock up today or tomorrow in Arcade.

Onward: along the bay to Pontevedra

Tomorrow everyone walks the same route. From the Casa da Torre you head downhill along Rúa de Queimaliños, under an arch of the Viaduto de Pontevedra and across the N-550 past the Capela de Santa Mariña. After a good 2 kilometres you reach Cesantes with its long beach. Then comes the first real climb, up to O Viso, and after that the descent to Arcade. In Ponte Sampaio you cross the Río Verdugo on a large stone bridge. There, during the Peninsular War, a battle drove the French out of Galicia. Beyond it comes the paved Brea Vella da Canicouva, a section of the old Roman road, slippery when wet. According to Camino Ninja it is just under 21 kilometres to Pontevedra.

What awaits you tomorrow

Pontevedra, the city that reclaimed walking. The old town belongs to pedestrians, and at the end of Rúa da Peregrina the church of the pilgrim Madonna awaits, built in the shape of a scallop shell. Before that you pass through Cesantes, whose parish the island of San Simón belongs to, and through Arcade, where Vigo's oysters grow.

Deep dive: The town on the bay of stories

A long read, in case you want to learn more about Redondela. About fifteen minutes' reading.

Where two ways become one

When you arrive in Redondela, you may already have two weeks behind you, or only two days. Perhaps you came inland via Tui, over the long climb to the little chapel of Santiaguiño de Antas and the steep descent after it. Perhaps you walked along the coast, via Baiona and Vigo. Here it makes no difference. In Redondela the Camino Portugués Central and the coastal variant run together, and from here to Santiago everyone walks the same way.

You notice it in the evening. In the albergue, people sit side by side who would never have met until yesterday, telling each other what they saw on their way. Redondela is a place where things come together. That is true not only of pilgrim routes. It is true of roads and railways, of fishermen and traders, of fleets and prisoners. The town lies in the innermost corner of the Ría de Vigo, on the Ensenada de San Simón, a quiet bay that has seen more history than many a capital. This text is about that bay and this town.

A village on the Roman road

Redondela grew out of two places. The older one was called Vilavella, the old village. It lay where the convent of the same name stands today, at a crossroads: here an old Roman road between Tui and Pontevedra met the road to Baiona. The Roman road was part of the great link the Romans built from Braga in today's Portugal to Astorga in Castile. Between Ponte de Lima and Padrón, the Portuguese Way largely follows its course. If you came along the Central today, you have seen one of its witnesses: about a hundred metres beyond the Capela de Santiaguiño de Antas, a Roman milestone stands beside the path.

The second place came later, around the thirteenth century, down by the bay. It was called Vilanova or Redondela Nova, the new village. Here, at the edge of the marshland, lived fishermen. Over time Vilavella and Vilanova grew into one town, but a strangely divided one: until the reorganisation of the judicial districts, Vilavella belonged to the diocese of Tui, while the other parishes belonged to the archdiocese of Santiago. The border between two church worlds ran right through the town.

In 1501 a convent was founded in Vilavella, where nuns lived under the rule of Saint Lawrence Justinian. Its church with five bays still stands, and on the Central you pass it shortly before the end of your stage. Even so, Redondela did not become large. When the Galician scholar José Cornide Saavedra described the area in 1764, he counted around four hundred households, and only fishing boats could enter the harbour.

The church of the Apostle

The Camino through Redondela passes the parish church, and it bears the name that has accompanied you for weeks: Santiago. It stands in the highest part of the old town, right on the Camino. The building was rebuilt several times, and what you see today dates from the sixteenth century, built in late Gothic forms, in the period when Gothic architecture in Europe was slowly giving way to the Renaissance.

About the interior, its altars and figures, we found no reliable sources, so we tell you nothing about it here. What can be documented is something else: in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Redondela was a place of sculptors and woodcarvers. An article on the art history of Vigo speaks of a vigorous core of artists who regularly worked for the churches of the neighbouring city. Domingo Martínez of Redondela, the first of them whose work in Vigo is documented, carved an altarpiece for the confraternity of Saint Anthony in 1669 and another for the collegiate church of Vigo in 1684. Antonio del Villar, according to the same source the town's most famous sculptor, made a figure of the Nazarene for the church of San Francisco in Vigo in 1725. Part of the baroque art in Vigo's churches therefore comes from workshops in Redondela.

For pilgrims today the church is more than a monument. The parish of Santiago runs its own albergue right next door, and from the end of March to the end of September there is a Mass with a pilgrim blessing every evening at 20:00. If you sit in the pews on such an evening, you are sitting in a church whose patron is the same as that of your destination, now only a little over eighty kilometres away.

Pilgrims on this way

The Portuguese Way is old, and famous names have walked it. The best-known pilgrim is Isabel of Aragon, Queen of Portugal, still called the Rainha Santa there, the holy queen. In 1325, shortly after the death of her husband, King Dinis, she went to Santiago. Her route led north via Valença, and in Compostela, it is said, she laid her crown on the Apostle's altar. In her will she left money for pilgrim hospitals in Portugal. In 1502 King Manuel the First made the pilgrimage from Lisbon to Santiago and paid for a lamp for the cathedral.

A visitor whose stop in Redondela is actually documented came in 1669. Cosimo the Third de' Medici, later Grand Duke of Tuscany, was travelling through Spain and Portugal at the time. He entered Spain at Tui and, on the way north, stopped in Redondela, in Pontevedra and in Padrón. On 4 and 6 March 1669 he prayed before the Apostle's altar in Santiago. His companions recorded the journey in texts and drawings. In the eighteenth century, between 1743 and 1745, the Italian Nicola Albani was on the road, and he too appears in the history of the Portuguese Way. He left one of the most detailed pilgrim accounts of his time.

After that it went quiet for a long time. Only in the 1990s, almost at the same time as on the Camino Francés, did pilgrims return to the Portuguese routes. Since 1999 they have slept in the Casa da Torre, the house with the tower from the sixteenth century that is now the public albergue. The coastal variant, whose pilgrims meet the Central here, was officially recognised in 2016. In 2024, 8,604 pilgrims stayed in the Casa da Torre alone.

The dragon from the bay

Once a year, at Corpus Christi, a monster returns to Redondela: the Coca. The Coca is a creature of Galician mythology that lives in the sea or in rivers. It is described with the body of a dragon, the tail of a serpent, the wings of a bat, four clawed legs and a mouth full of teeth. It probably stood for the devil.

The legend says that the Coca lived in the bay, near the island of San Simón. Again and again it came into the town and carried off young girls, dragging them to its cave. At last the young sailors joined forces, fought the monster and defeated it after a hard struggle. They carried the dead dragon into the town and danced around it with their swords.

You can still see that very dance today. Around midday about two dozen men dance the Danza das Espadas, the sword dance, all in white with red, green or blue sashes, with castanets and wooden swords joined by a white cord. The bagpipe plays along. At the same time the Penlas dance: little girls in white lace dresses with angel wings, sitting on the shoulders of women. These women are called the Burras, and traditionally they come from the guild of bakers. The girls stand for the freed maidens, the women for the joy of the mothers. Since 1950 the town centre has also been decorated for the festival with carpets of flowers and sand.

How old all this is, nobody knows exactly. The dragon appears in documents as early as the Middle Ages, the sword dance is documented from the sixteenth century, and the festival itself is usually dated to the fifteenth or sixteenth century. In the diocese of Tui, Corpus Christi became a feast day in 1482. Coca festivals once existed in Ribadavia, in Pontevedra, in Ourense, in Santiago and in A Coruña too. But only in Redondela has the tradition survived without interruption. In 2011 the festival was declared a Festival of Galician Tourist Interest.

An island and a song

Out in the bay lies the island the Coca is said to have come from: San Simón, and close beside it its smaller sister island, Santo Antón, joined to it by a bridge. The islands belong to the parish of Cesantes, which you walk through tomorrow. Hardly any place in Galicia has gathered so many stories in so little space.

The oldest is a love song. In the early thirteenth century, scholars believe, there lived a minstrel called Mendinho. Almost nothing is known about him, only that a single poem of his survives, a cantiga de amigo, a song in a woman's voice. She sits in the chapel of San Simón waiting for her beloved. Around her the waves are rising, and they are great. She has no boatman and cannot row, and she fears she will die at sea. The song is preserved in two great songbooks, the Cancioneiro da Vaticana in Rome and the Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon, and it is among the most famous texts of medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric poetry. In 1998 Galicia dedicated its Day of Galician Literature to Mendinho, together with two other song poets, Martín Codax and Xohán de Cangas. And the composer Alain Oulman set the song to music for the fado singer Amália Rodrigues.

Monks lived on the island too. It is said that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries they were Templars, and after them Franciscans. The evidence for this is thin, and we pass it on as it is told. In 1589 English privateers came, among them Francis Drake, and plundered the island.

Silver in the bay

On 23 October 1702 the quiet bay off Redondela became the scene of one of the great naval battles of its time. When this text was written, in October 2026, it was the 324th anniversary.

Europe was then fighting over who should inherit the throne in Madrid after the death of the last Spanish Habsburg: a Bourbon, backed by France, or a Habsburg, backed by England and the Netherlands. In the middle of this war the Spanish silver fleet sailed in from America, laden with the largest cargo of precious metal known until then. It was under the command of Manuel de Velasco y Tejada and was escorted by French warships under the Count of Châteaurenault. Instead of sailing to Seville, it entered the Ría de Vigo on 22 September 1702 and hid in its innermost corner, the bay of San Simón.

The defenders closed the narrows of Rande, the entrance to the bay, with a barrier of timber beams and chains. Forts stood on both shores, and behind them lay the French ships with their broadsides facing the entrance. On the morning of 23 October the Anglo-Dutch fleet under Admiral George Rooke attacked. While the Duke of Ormonde landed some two thousand soldiers near Teis and stormed the fort of Rande, Vice-Admiral Thomas Hopsonn sailed his ship, the Torbay, straight at the barrier. The Torbay broke through. Then the wind dropped, and no other ship could follow. The French sent a fireship against the Torbay and set her alight. But the fireship was carrying snuff, and when it exploded, the cloud of tobacco dust helped the crew bring the fire under control. When the wind returned, the other ships followed.

What happened next was decided within hours. The French set fire to their own ships and fled ashore so that the victors would not get them. By the next morning not a single French or Spanish ship was still in its owners' hands; all had been captured, burnt or sunk. After the battle the victors plundered Redondela and the island of San Simón. Vigo itself held out behind its walls. On 30 October Rooke withdrew.

Is there still a treasure down there?

Since this battle one question has lingered in Vigo and Redondela: does the silver of the Americas still lie on the bottom of the bay? The answer is disputed, and it is worth hearing both sides.

The sober side says: no, or hardly anything. The fleet lay in the ría for a month, and during that time the most valuable cargo was brought ashore. The silver went inland, via Lugo to the castle of Segovia. The Galician historian Xosé Ramón Barreiro therefore calls the treasure a beautiful myth, but a myth all the same. The victors were disappointed too. In London none other than Isaac Newton, then Master of the Royal Mint, received the spoils. In June 1703 he reported a good 4,500 pounds of silver and a little more than seven pounds of gold, together worth only about 14,000 pounds sterling. For the greatest silver fleet of its age, that was almost nothing.

The other side says: not everything had been unloaded, and some of it went down with the galleons. Luis Melero, for example, is convinced that valuables worth thirty million euros still lie in the ría. A German company once offered the Galician government 310 million euros for permission to search. In 2007 sonar images of the galleon Santo Cristo de Maracaibo were published. According to the Galician cultural authority, no coins were found in the investigations. The wreck lies deep in the mud, and anyone who wants to raise it has to dig down several metres.

To this day there is no answer that convinces everyone. The treasure was most powerful in literature anyway. In 1870 Jules Verne wrote his novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, and there Captain Nemo fetches the gold for his submarine Nautilus from exactly here, from the sunken ships in the bay of Vigo. On the island of San Simón a monument to Verne recalls this today.

The quarantine island

After the battle San Simón lay abandoned for a long time. Then, in the nineteenth century, the island was given a new task. By a royal order of 6 June 1838, prompted by the merchant Velázquez Moreno, it became a lazaretto, a quarantine station. Ships arriving from America had to serve their quarantine here before they could dock in Vigo. The sick for whom there was no cure lay on the small neighbouring island of Santo Antón, all the others on San Simón. There was no drinking water on the island.

For the region the lazaretto mattered. It is regarded as one key to the rise of the port of Vigo. In 1927 the station was closed; one source also gives 1923. Only after that was the little bridge between the two islands built. Until then each of them could only be reached by boat.

A town of bridges

At almost the same time as the lazaretto, something else changed the face of Redondela: the railway. In 1872 work began on the first great viaduct. On 30 June 1876 the Viaduto de Madrid opened, 255.89 metres long, with a deck and a lattice of wrought iron on stone piers. Exactly eight years later, on 30 June 1884, came the Viaduto de Pontevedra, shorter and on metal piers. With the line from Carril to Pontevedra, from 1899 you could travel by train from Santiago to Vigo and on to Madrid.

Since 1978 both viaducts have been protected monuments, and Redondela calls itself after them the town of the viaducts. When you arrive on the Central, you walk under the Viaduto de Madrid, and tomorrow morning you leave the town under an arch of the Viaduto de Pontevedra. Two iron gates, one for arriving and one for leaving.

The island of prisoners

In the summer of 1936 the Spanish Civil War began, and Galicia quickly fell into the hands of the rebels. The prisons in Vigo, Pontevedra, Ourense and Vilagarcía were soon overcrowded. General Martínez Anido, responsible for prisons under the Franco regime, had the old lazaretto of San Simón converted. In October 1936 the first prisoners arrived. Officially the island was now a penal colony; in reality it was a concentration camp.

The history of the camp has three phases. In the first, until the summer of 1937, most of the prisoners were Republicans from the province of Pontevedra. Some were released, others tried and executed, still others taken out of the camp by Falangists or the Guardia Civil and murdered on so-called walks, without any sentence. In the second phase, until February 1939, the island was at its fullest. After the fall of the northern front, prisoners came from Asturias, León, Cantabria and the Basque Country, among them a whole shipload of Basques brought from Bilbao on the steamer Upo Mendi. Extra huts were put up because there was not enough room. In the third phase, after a visit by the director general of prisons at the end of 1938, old men from all over Spain were sent here. Most of the prisoners were now over sixty, and many of them died on the island.

More than 5,600 people passed through this camp, never more than 2,000 at the same time. More than 517 died, not counting those who were shot or murdered. In 1941 alone, according to one source, there were 250 deaths. On the bridge between the two islands, where the cemetery lay on Santo Antón, many prisoners were shot. Survivors remembered a priest, Father Nieto, as especially cruel: he is said to have forced the prisoners to attend Mass under threat of death. On 15 March 1943 the camp was closed.

There is light in this story too, and it comes from Cesantes, the village on the shore opposite, which you walk through tomorrow. Women from Cesantes brought the prisoners food and clothing and carried messages back and forth between them and their families. They were called the Madriñas, the godmothers. The Spanish state today calls their help the most remarkable episode of resistance and solidarity in the island's history.

If you want to learn more about this period, you can read the novel The Carpenter's Pencil by Manuel Rivas. It was made into a film, and the film ends on San Simón.

A disaster and an orphanage

Even after the camp the island found no peace. In summer an organisation of the regime used it as a holiday camp. Its history also includes 22 August 1950. On that day the launch Monchiña sank. It was licensed for forty people and had around sixty-six on board. Forty-three died, in water only about four metres deep. It is regarded as the worst shipping disaster in the Ría de Vigo in a hundred years. Among the twenty-three survivors was an eighteen-year-old boy, Carlos Alonso, who later became a photographer in Redondela.

From 1955 to 1963 the island then served as a home for the orphans of seamen, who received training here. After that it stood empty and fell into decay.

The island of reflection

In 1999 San Simón and Santo Antón were declared a Site of Cultural Interest, as a historic site. In the same year work began to restore gardens and buildings, among them the Paseo dos Buxos, a path between centuries-old box trees. The architect César Portela was involved in the renewal. Today San Simón calls itself the island of thought. There is a hall for events, a library and a school of the sea, Galician literary prizes are awarded here, and the writer Agustín Fernández Mallo set his novel Trilogía de la guerra on the island, which won the Premio Biblioteca Breve in 2018.

Above all, though, the island has become a place of remembrance. In 2006 the Galician cultural authority chose it as the symbol of repression in the Year of Memory. On 28 August 2025 the Spanish government opened the procedure, and on 21 August 2026 the official state gazette published that the two islands are officially a Place of Democratic Memory. Plaques, films and information are to tell in future what happened here.

When this text was written, in autumn 2026, there were, according to older information, free boat trips to the island, among other places from Cesantes. We could not confirm whether and when they currently run. Ask in Redondela if you have a day to spare.

A town that celebrates itself

While you are in Redondela you may see none of this. You see a small town with just under 29,000 inhabitants in the whole municipality, with bars and supermarkets and two viaducts. But Redondela likes to celebrate. On the second Sunday in May, since the 1980s, more than 30,000 people have come to the Festa do Choco, the festival of the cuttlefish from the bay, and the locals call themselves Choqueiros. Since 1998 there has been a summer carnival in August. At Corpus Christi the Coca dies. And since 2002 Redondela has been twinned with Monção, a town on the Portuguese bank of the Minho.

Between the festivals, Redondela is for you above all a place of transition: here pilgrims arrive from two sides, and tomorrow they walk on together.

What Redondela gives you

Tomorrow you walk through Cesantes. That is where the women came from who brought food and clothing to the prisoners on the island. Out in the bay lies the island that has heard a love song and seen monks, pirates, a burning fleet, the sick in quarantine, prisoners, the drowning and orphaned children. Today it is a place for reflection.

Perhaps that is the lesson of this bay. What comes together here can become a curse or a gift. A fleet seeking shelter becomes a trap. A place for the sick becomes a camp. And yet in the darkest years there were people who helped. On the Camino, two ways come together in Redondela, and with them people who did not know each other. What comes of that is partly up to you. On the Camino it is usually a gift.