Santo Domingo de la Calzada

Right now in Santo Domingo de la Calzada (as of October 2026)

• Winter break: The Abadía Cisterciense albergue is closed from 1 November to the end of February. The Cofradía del Santo albergue stays open all year.
• Later check-in: From November to February the Cofradía albergue only opens at 13:00 instead of 11:00.
• New management: The Abadía Cisterciense albergue has been under new management since June 2026.

How long to stay?

An afternoon is enough. Almost everything you want to see lies along a single street, the Calle Mayor: the cathedral with the saint's tomb and the hen house, the free-standing tower, the old pilgrim hospital and the albergues. That leaves time for the remains of the town wall and an evening in the albergue garden. The small town won't fill a whole rest day.

Santo Domingo in Ninja numbers

• Around 565 kilometres to Santiago from here, according to Camino Ninja. Almost three quarters of the Camino Francés still lie ahead of you.
• Since 1350 live chickens are documented in the cathedral. That year a bull from Pope Clement VI allowed the custom.
• Every 15 days the rooster and hen are swapped (as of 2024). The birds come from the confraternity's own flock in the garden of the pilgrim albergue.
• Almost 70 metres tall is the cathedral's free-standing tower, the highest in La Rioja.
• Around 202 kilometres is the length of the Camino Vasco del Interior from Irún, according to Camino Ninja, which meets the Camino Francés here.

Arriving: on the saint's road

Coming from Nájera on the Camino Francés, you arrive after just under 21 kilometres, according to Camino Ninja. Beyond Azofra you pass a stone justice pillar from the sixteenth century, and before Cirueña a golf development that was built right on top of the historic route in 2013. After Cirueña you see Santo Domingo from a rise, and from there it's about 40 minutes to the cathedral. Then comes a long concrete descent past potato stores.

You enter town on the Avenida de Torrecilla and then walk straight along the Calle Mayor. It runs east to west through the old town, past both pilgrim albergues, to the cathedral. If you come on the Camino Vasco del Interior from the direction of Haro, your route ends here, and from tomorrow you continue on the Camino Francés.

In brief: a town that belongs to a road builder

Domingo García lived from about 1019 to 1109 and devoted his life to pilgrims. He built a bridge over the Río Oja and a hospital, and he improved the road between Nájera and Redecilla. Hence his byname "de la Calzada", of the road. The town grew around his tomb. Work on today's church began in 1158, and after 1232 it became a cathedral.

King Alfonso VIII granted the town its charters in 1187 and 1207. Around 1367 to 1369 King Pedro I had a wall built, of which towers and sections still stand. His half-brother and rival, King Henry II, died in Santo Domingo in 1379. The town is also called the "Compostela of La Rioja".

Rooster, hen and a hanged man

The most famous line about the town goes: "Santo Domingo de la Calzada, donde cantó la gallina después de asada." Santo Domingo, where the hen sang after it was roasted. Behind it lies a legend. A German pilgrim family stays here with their son Hugonell. The innkeeper's daughter falls for him, is rejected, and out of revenge hides a silver cup in his luggage. The young man is hanged as a thief. When his parents reach the gallows, he is alive, held up by the saint. They rush to the judge, who is sitting at dinner. He scoffs that their son is as alive as the chickens on his plate, and the birds jump up and crow.

Almost the same story is told in Barcelos in Portugal, where the rooster has become a symbol of the whole country. But in Santo Domingo the chickens still crow today. In a Gothic stone cage inside the cathedral, built around 1460, live a white rooster and a white hen. It is said to be the only cathedral where animals are allowed to live.

Along the Calle Mayor: what to see

Everything lies on or near the Calle Mayor, so you won't need a map. Just follow the street you arrived on.

• Catedral del Salvador: Building began in 1158 over the tomb of Santo Domingo. Beneath his mausoleum is a crypt with the relics, and on the tomb hangs a sickle that recalls one of his miracles. The Gothic hen house stands in the transept. A piece of the gallows from the legend is also said to be on display. Take a look at the Renaissance high altarpiece by Damián Forment, which has stood in the north transept since its restoration in 1994. Pilgrims with a credencial pay less, in 2024 it was €3. We could not reliably find current opening hours and prices, so ask at the albergue or the tourist office.
• Torre exenta: The tower stands alone across the street because an earlier tower on the church had problems with its foundations. Martín de Beratúa built it from 1762, almost 70 metres tall. It is open to visitors, but we could not find a current price.
• The old pilgrim hospital: On the Plaza del Santo stands the hospital that goes back to Santo Domingo. Pilgrims slept here until 1965, today it is a Parador, a state-run hotel.
• Town wall: King Pedro I had it built in the fourteenth century. Twelve towers and several sections survive, and it is considered the most important town wall in La Rioja.
• Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de la Anunciación: In the Cistercian nuns' convent on the corner of the Calle de las Monjas you'll find a large Baroque altarpiece of the Annunciation and the alabaster tomb of three bishops, among them the convent's founder, Pedro Manso de Zúñiga.

Food and drink

Most restaurants are on the Calle Mayor. Typical of La Rioja are patatas a la riojana, potatoes with chorizo, and bacalao a la riojana, salt cod in tomato sauce. The town's pastry is called ahorcaditos, "little hanged ones", after the legend: shell-shaped pastries filled with almond cream. The Cistercian nuns also sell borrachuelos at their guesthouse.

Honestly

• The way in is no treat. First the golf development on the old route, then a long concrete track with no earth path alongside.
• The big albergue has few sockets. Several pilgrims report that there is no socket by the bed. Charge your phone in the common rooms.
• The second albergue is a question mark. The Abadía Cisterciense albergue got poor reviews in Camino Ninja in 2025, pilgrims found it run-down. It has had new management since June 2026, and we don't yet know what it is like now.
• Tomorrow there's little shade. The next stage runs for a long way beside the N-120 main road and a motorway construction site, with no shade and no rest areas until Grañón.

Where pilgrims sleep

• Albergue de Peregrinos Cofradía del Santo: the albergue of the saint's confraternity at Calle Mayor 38–42, in the heart of the old town. €13 including disposable bedding (as of October 2026), open all year, only for pilgrims with a credencial, reservations possible. It is very large, with many dormitories, a lift, big common rooms and a garden with foot baths. The kitchen has a microwave but no stove. The confraternity has hosted pilgrims here since 1968, and today's albergue opened in 2009. You can also get a credencial here.
• Albergue de Peregrinos Abadía Cisterciense: at Calle Mayor 29, in an eighteenth-century building. 40 beds in small rooms with two to four places, €13 to €15, breakfast €5 (as of October 2026). Reservations possible, open from 1 March to 31 October.

Private rooms in guesthouses and small hostels start at around €40 for two (as of October 2026).

Ninja tips

• The cathedral chickens live with you: In the garden of the confraternity's albergue they raise the white chickens that take turns in the cathedral. Look into the courtyard while you hang up your washing.
• Feet in cold water: The Cofradía's garden has foot baths. After 21 kilometres, that's the best quarter of an hour of the day.
• Arriving early pays off: In the big albergue the lower bunks are handed out first, so if you come early you won't have to climb.
• Charging cable to the living room: You'll find sockets by the sofas on the first floor, not by the bed.
• Show your credencial: You pay less at the cathedral with a credencial.
• A short day to Grañón: If you only want to walk 6.7 kilometres tomorrow, Grañón has a parish albergue with mattresses on the floor and a shared dinner and breakfast by donation. You can't book, and you'll need a sleeping bag.

Practical tips for pilgrims

• Tourist office: at Calle Mayor 3. From May to November daily 10:00 to 14:00 and 16:00 to 19:00, otherwise Tuesday to Sunday mornings, Saturdays also afternoons, closed Mondays (as of May 2026).
• Shopping: There's an ATM, pharmacy, doctor, supermarket, bakery and butcher in town.
• Fiestas del Santo: In May the town celebrates its saint, including night-time processions.

Onward: across the border into Castile

You leave town on the Calle Mayor and cross the Río Oja on a bridge that stands on Santo Domingo's original structure. Next to it is the Ermita del Puente from 1917. Then tracks beside the N-120 take you to Grañón, 6.7 kilometres according to Camino Ninja. About two kilometres further on you leave La Rioja and enter Castilla y León. Via Redecilla del Camino (10.3 km) and Viloria de Rioja (14.0 km) the route leads to Belorado, 22.2 kilometres according to Camino Ninja.

What awaits you tomorrow

Tomorrow you walk through your saint's home country. Santo Domingo is also called Domingo de Viloria, after Viloria de Rioja, which you reach after 14 kilometres. Before that, in Redecilla, the Romanesque baptismal font in the church is worth a look, even if it isn't always in its place. At the end of the day Belorado awaits, your first stage town in Castile.

Deep dive: The man who built roads

A long read, in case you want to learn more about Santo Domingo de la Calzada. About twenty-five minutes' reading.

A road that got a town

When you stand on the Calle Mayor, you are standing in the middle of this town's story. The street you came in on is not just any high street. It is the reason there are houses here at all. In Spanish, a calzada is a built-up, paved road, and Santo Domingo de la Calzada is Saint Dominic of the Road. Most towns get a road sooner or later. Here it went the other way round: a road got a town.

It begins with a man who wanted to make life easier for pilgrims. He cleared a forest and built a bridge, a hospital, a well and a church. When he died he was buried beside his road, and around his grave grew a cathedral, a confraternity and a town with walls and towers. Then there is one of the strangest legends on the whole Way of St James, a story of a hanged man, a mocking judge and two roast chickens. Because of it, a white rooster and a white hen still live in the cathedral today.

This text tells both: what we know about Domingo and his town, and what people tell about him. The line between the two is often thin here. We will always tell you which side of it you are standing on.

A shepherd nobody wanted

According to tradition, Domingo García was born in 1019 in Viloria, a small village you will pass through tomorrow after 14 kilometres. A magazine reporting on the town's anniversary in 2019 even gives the day, 25 April. The birthplace is not entirely certain; the Spanish Wikipedia puts a question mark after it. His parents, the accounts of his life say, were called Ximeno García and Orodulce. His father was a peasant, and as a young man Domingo herded livestock.

After his parents died he wanted to become a monk. He knocked on the doors of the Benedictines, first at the monastery of Valvanera, then at San Millán de la Cogolla, one of the great monasteries of La Rioja. Both times he was turned away. The sources do not say why. Still, you can imagine what that means for a young man: he wants to give his life to God, and twice he is told he is not needed.

Domingo went into the forest. In a holm oak wood near the Río Oja, which the sources call Ayuela, he lived as a hermit until around 1039. Where the town stands today there was forest then. Pilgrims were already passing through this forest on their way to Santiago, and at the Oja they had to get across the river.

A papal envoy and a wooden bridge

Around 1039 a man came to the area who changed Domingo's life. Gregory of Ostia had been sent to Calahorra as an envoy of the Pope to help against a plague of locusts. He ordained Domingo a priest, and the two worked together. Between them they built a first bridge over the Oja, still made of wood, so that pilgrims could get across dry.

Gregory died in 1044. Domingo returned to his forest and began to transform it. He felled trees, cleared land for farming and laid a paved road between Nájera and Redecilla del Camino. That is exactly the stretch you walked today from Nájera and will continue along tomorrow as far as Redecilla. His road became the main pilgrim route in this part of La Rioja, and it gave him the name everyone still knows him by.

How he is supposed to have cleared the forest has its own legend. In 1702 the chronicler José González de Tejada wrote: "Con una hoz de segar espigas desmontó el Monte todo." With a sickle meant for cutting ears of grain, he brought down the whole forest. Tejada called it a rare miracle told of this saint alone, and reported that the sickle was kept with great veneration in the saint's chapel. For a long time a tree and a sickle were the town's coat of arms. Only later were a rooster and a hen added.

Bridge, hospital, well and church

Around his hermitage Domingo built what pilgrims needed. He replaced the wooden bridge with one of stone. Next to it came a hospital for the poor and for pilgrims, a well and a church. According to tradition, the hospital stood on the remains of a hunting lodge of the kings of Navarre. Another version says the Count of Nájera, Diego Díaz López de Haro, gave Domingo his hunting pavilion. We do not know which is true. Both tell the same story: a house of the powerful became a house for strangers.

The powerful themselves took notice too. King Alfonso the Sixth of Castile conquered La Rioja in 1076, visited Domingo in 1090 and supported his work on the road. In 1098 he gave him land for a church dedicated to the Saviour and to Saint Mary. Bishop Pedro Nazar of Calahorra consecrated it in 1106. Domingo himself chose to be buried not inside the church but outside, against its wall.

Domingo died on 12 May 1109; it was a Saturday. He was buried where he had wished, by the church, beside his road. Around his grave, his hospital and his bridge the settlement that bears his name now grew. How much the bridge and hospital still depended on many helpers afterwards is shown by a charter from 1191. In it Bishop García promised an indulgence to everyone who gave money for the church, the hospital and the bridge, or who lent their oxen to haul stone.

The bridge over the Oja, which you will cross tomorrow as you leave town, is now 148 metres long and has 16 arches. Whether stones from Domingo's time are still in it, the sources disagree. All that is certain is that it stands where he built his bridge.

The Codex Calixtinus already knows him

We should be honest about how little we know for certain about Domingo's life. The legal historian Ignacio Cremades writes that there is no reliable documentation of his life in the second half of the eleventh century. Much of it comes from accounts written centuries later, such as Fray Luis de la Vega's history of the saint from 1606 or González de Tejada's from 1702.

All the more precious, then, is one fairly early witness. Around the middle of the twelfth century the Codex Calixtinus was written, the great book about the Way of St James, whose fifth part is often called Europe's first pilgrim guide. It lists the places between Logroño and Burgos: Nájera, Santo Domingo, Redecilla, Belorado. And in the chapter on the saints' tombs a pilgrim should visit along the way, it says that one must visit the body of Saint Domingo, a confessor, who built the stretch of road on which he rests, between the city of Nájera and Redecilla del Camino.

That is a remarkable sentence. A few decades after his death, a pilgrim guide knew Domingo not as a miracle worker and not as a preacher, but as the man who built the road. And he rests beside it. Whoever walks to his grave walks on his work.

A disciple named Juan

Domingo did not work alone. His best-known helper was a young man from Quintanaortuño near Burgos, born in 1080, who was later called San Juan de Ortega. He is regarded as Domingo's disciple and helped him build the stone bridge, the hospital and the church.

After his master's death, Juan himself set off as a pilgrim to Jerusalem around 1112. On the way back he was shipwrecked. According to tradition he called on Saint Nicholas of Bari and promised him a chapel if he survived. He survived and kept his word. In the Montes de Oca, a forested range east of Burgos, he built a chapel and a pilgrim hostel. Around 1138 this became a monastery, and around the monastery grew the village of San Juan de Ortega, which you will pass through in a few days.

Tradition credits him with completing Domingo's road as far as Burgos and with building bridges, among them in Logroño, in Nájera, in Santo Domingo itself and in Belorado. Juan died on 2 June 1163 in his monastery. In his church people still tell of the miracle of light: at the equinoxes, in the late afternoon, a ray of sun falls through a window onto a capital showing the Annunciation to Mary.

Today the two men are something like the patron saints of building in Spain. Domingo is the patron of Spanish civil engineers. In 1953 a building technology institute declared Juan its patron, and since 1971 he has been patron of Spain's building surveyors. It is a lovely coincidence: the master and his disciple, neither of whom wrote anything of note, are honoured by people who build bridges and houses.

From grave to cathedral

The church Domingo had begun did not stay as it was. Around 1158 work began on the present building; the Annals of Compostela give that year. The master builder was called Garçion. He kept parts of the older church and planned something grand: a choir with an ambulatory and three chapels around it. Of these chapels only the central one survives. In the same year the church became a collegiate church, with a chapter of clergy.

Then came a great leap. In 1232 papal bulls raised the church to a cathedral, and the Bishop of Calahorra moved his seat here. Ever since, Calahorra and Santo Domingo have shared the dignity of a bishop's seat, and the diocese bears both names. A place that had been forest barely two centuries earlier now had a cathedral. And this cathedral was built around a grave that lay on a pilgrim road.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Gothic naves were built, along with a fortified porch and the west portal. The original plan was larger; it was simplified. What you see today is a mixture: Romanesque in the choir, Gothic in the naves, Baroque in the tower, which stands across the street.

If you have time, take a look at the ambulatory. On the capitals and corbels sits Romanesque sculpture from the first building phase, heavily weathered. You can make out the Flight into Egypt and Saint Martin sharing his cloak. A saint sharing with a beggar, in a church built around the grave of a man who helped pilgrims: it fits.

In 1508 a pillar in the choir collapsed. Between 1529 and 1531 the master builder Juan de Rasines rebuilt the main chapel and the crossing and covered them with a star vault. In the sixteenth century the south transept was also raised, to give the saint's tomb a worthy setting. Between 1520 and 1530 Andrés de Nájera, Guillén de Holanda and others carved the choir stalls in the style of the early Renaissance. The south portal, which visitors usually use today, was only added in the eighteenth century. On it stand Santo Domingo and the two martyrs Emeterio and Celedonio from Calahorra.

At the saint's tomb

Domingo lies in the south transept. His tomb is a structure from three periods. At the bottom is a Romanesque slab with the figure of the saint lying down. Above it stands a Gothic table showing his miracles. And above that rises a late Gothic canopy of alabaster. Juan de Rasines made it in 1513 to a design by the sculptor Felipe Bigarny. The entrance to the crypt is near the crossing; the saint's relics rest there.

Look at the grille around the reclining figure. For the saint's feast in May, the confraternity blesses holm oak branches in the cathedral, and locals and visitors tie them to the grille. In 2019 a magazine described this custom as one meant, since the Middle Ages, to keep animals away. They are branches of the trees that made up the forest Domingo is said to have cleared.

In the cathedral, nine painted panels tell what was attributed to the saint: he is said to have freed a French knight from a demon, restored the sight of a blind Norman and, in the fifteenth century, cured a German pilgrim named Bernard of an eye infection. All three were strangers, people who had come from far away.

Opposite the tomb, in the wall of the same transept, you may already hear a crow. We will come to that shortly.

Damián Forment's last work

In the north transept stands the cathedral's largest work of art, an altarpiece 13 metres high and 9 metres wide. It was made by Damián Forment, one of the most important sculptors of the Spanish Renaissance. Forment came from Aragón and had already created the great altarpieces in the Basílica del Pilar in Zaragoza, in Huesca Cathedral and in the monastery of Poblet. In 1537 he signed the contract for Santo Domingo.

It became his last work. Forment died in Santo Domingo de la Calzada in 1540 while still working on this altarpiece. He left it almost finished. The base is alabaster, the rest is wood. The painting was done by Andrés de Melgar.

If you look closely, you will discover something surprising. Among the saints and the scenes from the life of Christ, creatures from ancient mythology are romping: tritons, satyrs, nereids and centaurs. The Renaissance had rediscovered antiquity, and Forment was not shy about putting sea gods and horse-men into a high altar.

The altarpiece originally stood at the east end of the church, in the main chapel. In 1994 it was dismantled for restoration. In the process, Romanesque reliefs of the ambulatory came to light behind it, hidden for centuries. The altarpiece did not return to its old place but went to the north transept. The move came at a price: older elements were destroyed or moved, a Gothic stone balcony disappeared and a new window was put in. In return, the Romanesque choir can be seen again. After the floor was renewed in 2009, the altarpiece got a screen on which Forment himself, in a staged presentation, tells the story of his work.

The story of the hanged man

Now for the chickens. The legend told in Santo Domingo goes like this, though the details change from version to version.

A German pilgrim family, father, mother and son, is on the way to Santiago. In most versions the son is called Hugonell, and he is about eighteen years old. The family spends the night at an inn in Santo Domingo. The innkeeper's daughter falls in love with the young man, but he rejects her. Hurt, she hides a silver cup in his pilgrim's bag and reports a theft. Soldiers find the cup, and the son is sentenced to death on the gallows as a thief, under the laws of King Alfonso the Tenth, as one version specifies.

The parents carry on to Santiago, as many versions tell it, and on their way back they return to the gallows. Their son is still hanging there. But he is alive. He calls out to them that Saint Domingo has been holding him up the whole time. The parents run to the judge, the town's corregidor. He is just sitting down to eat, a roast rooster and a roast hen in front of him. He laughs at the parents. Their son, he says, is as alive as the chickens on his plate. At that moment, the legend says, the rooster and the hen stand up, ruffle their feathers and begin to sing.

The judge hurries to the gallows, has the young man freed, and there is a procession. From this moment comes the saying almost everyone in Spain knows: "Santo Domingo de la Calzada, donde cantó la gallina después de asada." Santo Domingo, where the hen sang after she had been roasted.

There are places in town tied to this story. The Casa del Corregidor is said to be where the judge ate. Fray Luis de la Vega reported in 1606 that the house where the miracle happened had been bought in 1439 by a Hieronymite monastery as a guesthouse, and that an inscription recalled it: in this house the miracle of the rooster and the hen took place. On 13 October people go on a pilgrimage to the Ermita de la Mesa del Santo, and this pilgrimage recalls the miracle. And at the pastry shop you can eat the legend: ahorcaditos, the little hanged ones, are puff pastries with almond cream, and milagros del santo, the saint's miracles, are biscuits shaped like hens.

Where the chickens come from

The story is older than its chickens, and it was not born in Santo Domingo. The earliest version we know is in the Codex Calixtinus, in the book of the miracles of St James. There it is set in Toulouse, in the year 1090. German pilgrims stay with a rich, greedy innkeeper. He hides a silver cup in their luggage so he can accuse them. Father and son are condemned, and the son offers to die in his father's place. He is hanged and hangs on the gallows for 36 days, and he lives. Not Domingo but St James himself has held him up. There are no chickens in this version. The Codex ends with a clear lesson: do not cheat pilgrims, receive them kindly.

Later Vincent of Beauvais, Jacobus de Voragine in his Golden Legend, the poet Gonzalo de Berceo and King Alfonso the Tenth also told stories of a hanged man who was saved. In their versions the rescuer is St James or Mary, and the place, when it is named, is Toulouse. In a manuscript from Santo Domingo itself, which the historian Tomás Ramírez Pascual dates to the early twelfth century, the hanged man is a young Englishman named Hugonell, and he hangs in Triacastela in Galicia.

At some point the story moved to Santo Domingo, changed its rescuer and acquired its chickens. Ramírez Pascual thinks the miracle was already firmly located here by around 1300. A pilgrim badge of lead and tin, dated to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, shows Santo Domingo holding a rooster and a hen in his arms. It is now in the Musée de Cluny in Paris. According to Cremades, the first written account of both miracles together, the hanged man and the chickens, set in Santo Domingo and attributed to the saint, is in the travel diary of the French nobleman Nompar de Caumont, who made the pilgrimage to Santiago in 1417.

Since then the details have kept shifting. In 1606 Fray Luis de la Vega turned the German family into a French one. Later versions have the family come from Xanten on the Lower Rhine, others from Winnenden in Swabia. In 1702 Tejada placed the events around the year 1400, approximately, as he himself writes. And in Barcelos in Portugal they tell a sister story in which a roast rooster crows to save an innocent pilgrim. There the rooster became the symbol of an entire country. But the pair of rooster and hen rising from the plate and singing belongs to Santo Domingo.

A henhouse with the Pope's blessing

And then comes the most astonishing part: the chickens are real. On 6 October 1350, in Avignon, Pope Clement the Sixth issued a bull for the church of Santo Domingo. In it he grants an indulgence to all who help with the services, take part in the celebrations or look at the rooster and the hen that are in this church. In Latin: "Et omnes videntes gallum et gallinam ibidem existentes." It is the earliest document that mentions the living birds in the church. So there was crowing here nearly seven hundred years ago.

Around 1460 the animals were given a house of their own, the gallinero, a Gothic cage of painted stone in the wall of the south transept, opposite the saint's tomb. Today a pane of glass protects it so the birds are not startled. Inside live a white rooster and a white hen. They are swapped regularly. How often, the sources disagree; the figures range from a week to a month. The birds come from the confraternity's own flock. If you sleep in its albergue, you can see their colleagues in the garden.

Also on display in the transept is a piece of wood said to come from the gallows of the legend. One source gives the year 1445 for the small niche where it lies. Older pilgrim accounts also mention the hanged man's shirt being shown in the church. It is considered lost.

Medieval pilgrims loved these birds. The German pilgrim Hermann Künig, who wrote a pilgrim guide for Germans in the fifteenth century, claimed to have seen the room where the chickens sang and danced. Pilgrims stuck the birds' feathers in their hats, and in 1702 Tejada reported that pilgrims took feathers from the cage. Another belief held that if the chickens ate breadcrumbs from a walker's pilgrim staff, he would reach Compostela safely. In 2014 a local historian wrote that the marks on the ledge of the cage came from blows of pilgrim staffs. Take a look and decide for yourself.

You often read that this is the only cathedral in the world where animals live. We have not been able to check that. It is rare, at any rate.

Did Hugonell exist?

Many pilgrims ask here: did it happen? The honest answer has two parts.

There is no historical evidence for the miracle itself. In the Middle Ages the story of the hanged man who was saved was told in many places, with different rescuers and different victims. Its oldest traceable setting is Toulouse, not La Rioja, and its oldest rescuer is St James, not Domingo. The chickens came later. The name Hugonell first appears for an Englishman in Galicia. There is much to suggest that Santo Domingo took in a wandering story and tied it to its saint, as other places did too. Cremades describes how such miracle stories were used in sermons and carried on by minstrels and blind singers.

And yet there is something very real in the story. Cremades, a legal historian, wrote a long essay on the law of the Way of St James using the hanged pilgrim as his example. Pilgrims in the Middle Ages were vulnerable. They were strangers, and anyone who pinned something on them had an easy time of it. That is why kings issued letters of protection for pilgrims to Santiago. It is no accident that the Codex Calixtinus ends its version with a warning to innkeepers. The legend tells of a real fear and a real need for protection. That a saint who devoted his life to strangers rescues a stranger in it fits exactly.

So when you stand in front of the henhouse, you do not have to believe in roast birds getting up. You can simply see that for almost seven hundred years a town has put two living animals in its cathedral so that no one forgets how pilgrims should be treated.

Walls, kings and a tower on its own

The town around the grave grew. In 1141 it received a settlement charter, and King Alfonso the Eighth granted it town rights in 1187 and 1207 that drew further settlers. The charter of 1187 already mentions a house for lepers, a hospital of Saint Lazarus. In 1250 the town passed from the lordship of the church to the crown.

In the fourteenth century it was drawn into a war between brothers. King Pedro the First of Castile fought his half-brother Henry of Trastámara for the throne. Around 1367 to 1369 Pedro had the town surrounded by walls, 1,670 metres long, with 38 towers and seven gates. Parts of them still stand. They are considered the largest surviving town walls in La Rioja. Pedro lost the war and, in 1369, his life. His half-brother became king as Henry the Second, and he died in Santo Domingo in 1379, in the house now called the Casa de Trastámara.

In the sixteenth century the town reached its peak, with around 3,000 inhabitants. Fray Bernardo de Fresneda, confessor to Emperor Charles the Fifth and King Philip the Second, had a Franciscan monastery built, where he is also buried. In 1610 Bishop Pedro Manso de Zúñiga brought Cistercian nuns from Palencia to the town. Today their convent includes the town's second pilgrim albergue, in the old chaplain's house.

And then there is the tower standing on its own across the street. The cathedral had others before it. The Romanesque tower burned down in 1450; the Gothic one was taken down when it threatened to collapse. In the 1760s Martín de Beratúa built the present Baroque tower under Bishop Andrés Porras, around 70 metres high, the tallest in La Rioja. The exact building dates vary in the sources. Why does it stand apart? According to tradition, the ground next to the church was too sandy. It is said that deer and cow horns were used to strengthen the foundations. That is the kind of story that likes to grow around towers. What is documented is that freestanding towers are rare in Spain and this is one of the few.

The hospital on the Plaza del Santo

The hospital Domingo founded stood on the square in front of the cathedral now called the Plaza del Santo. When Domingo died in 1109, he left it as a hospital for the poor and for pilgrims. The historian Eduardo Azofra shows it in his account of the settlement around 1125 beside the first houses, near the church. Between 1181 and 1212, according to Azofra, donations to the charitable institutions of the Way were at their height.

For centuries the house took in the poor and pilgrims. In the nineteenth century that changed. After church property was secularised, the hospital moved in 1840 to the former Franciscan monastery, where the Daughters of Charity ran it. The old building on the square was restored in 1965 and has been a Parador ever since, one of Spain's state-run hotels. Whether pilgrims still slept there after that, and for how long, our sources do not agree.

The Gothic hall with its wide pillars and pointed arches survives; today there are sofas in it. It is worth remembering as you cross the square: this house was built for the poor and for pilgrims, for people like you.

The oldest confraternity on the Way

The hospital would not have survived without people to carry it. Those people were the Cofradía del Santo, the Confraternity of the Saint. It is regarded as the oldest charitable confraternity on the Way of St James. It may have been founded in Domingo's own lifetime, together with Bishop Pedro of Calahorra and Nájera. A charter from 1120 records how the confraternity's house, with everything belonging to it, was handed over to the Bishop of Nájera. The confraternity looked after the hospital and the care of the poor and pilgrims. Azofra calls this a true model of social security, in an age that left such things almost unattended. And he writes that the confraternity has existed without interruption to this day.

If that is true, this community has been caring for pilgrims for some nine hundred years. Its house stands on the Calle Mayor. It is a Renaissance building from the sixteenth century, built by the Samaniego family and remodelled in the eighteenth century. Since 1968 it has been a pilgrim albergue and the seat of the confraternity. In 2009 the confraternity opened today's large albergue in several connected buildings. If you sleep there, you are sleeping inside one of the oldest unbroken traditions of hospitality on the whole Way. Volunteers of the confraternity welcome you, and in the garden live the chickens that take turns moving into the cathedral.

You see the confraternity most clearly at the saint's feast in May. At the start of the festivities the procession of the Prioras passes through the town. Prioras is the name for the women who look after pilgrims as volunteers all year round. In the procession of the Doncellas, young women carry the Pan del Santo, the saint's bread, a soft roll, in baskets on their heads. It stands for Domingo's care for the hungry and for all the nameless people who did the same in the centuries after him. On the great day, 12 May, the anniversary of Domingo's death, the confraternity hands out chickpeas with meat and vegetables at the Almuerzo del Santo. It is a feast that revolves around bread and food, in a town that grew up around a hospital.

A thousand years after his birth

The modern era was not always kind to Santo Domingo. The seventeenth century brought uncertainty and crises, as it did all over Spain. In the nineteenth century the church lost much of its property, and the hospital had to move.

The twentieth century brought the turnaround. In 1931 the cathedral was declared a national monument, and in 1973 the old town a historic ensemble. During the restoration from 1984 to 1987 the cloister was freed of later chapel additions, and in 1992 a fifteenth-century wooden ceiling in Mudéjar style came to light in the chapter house. In 1968 the confraternity opened its house to pilgrims. In 1988 the Fiestas del Santo were declared a festival of national tourist interest.

In 2019 the town celebrated a thousand years since its founder's birth. It was a jubilee year with its own Holy Door, the Puerta del Perdón. It was open from 25 April 2019 to 12 January 2020. Its doors of wood and bronze show the parable of the prodigal son, a story about coming home, about an open door and about a father who runs to meet the one arriving. For a pilgrim town, it is hard to imagine a more fitting image.

At the time of writing, in autumn 2026, the confraternity was still offering beds to pilgrims in its albergue, all year round. In the Gothic cage in the cathedral there was still a white rooster and a white hen. And every day pilgrims came into town along the Avenida de Torrecilla and down the Calle Mayor to the grave of the man who made this road firm almost a thousand years ago.

What Santo Domingo gives you

We know of no writings by Domingo, no sermons, no battles. Two monasteries did not want him. So he simply did what lay in front of him: felled trees, laid stones, built a bridge, a roof for strangers. Europe's first pilgrim guide calls him the man who built the road. Perhaps he never wanted to be more than that.

His disciple Juan carried it on, a few stages further, in the forests of the Montes de Oca. The confraternity carried it on, for nine hundred years. And perhaps that is the real message of the chickens in the cathedral: that injustice done to strangers does not get the last word, and that a whole town lets itself be reminded of this every day by a rooster crowing.

Tomorrow morning you will walk out over the bridge across the Oja. You will be walking over what a rejected shepherd built so that others could walk more easily. Perhaps you will take a small question with you from here, whatever you believe: where can you make the way a little easier for someone else today?