Village
Cariño is a fishing town of about 3,700 inhabitants in the province of La Coruña, in the Galician comarca of Ortegal, which split off from the municipality of Ortigueira on 21 January 1988 and is made up of five parishes settled on the western shore of the ría of Ortigueira. It borders to the west the sierra da Capelada, whose Vixía de Herbeira cliffs are the highest in Spain and in continental and coastal Europe, and to the north extends the cabo Ortegal, with the punta dos Aguillóns, on the divide between the Atlantic and the Cantabrian Sea. In the sierra prehistoric remains have been found, such as flint flakes and five dolmens, and later castros such as that of da Moura or the Punta del Castro; at San Xiao do Trebo the remains of a Roman villa were discovered beneath a chapel.
Nature
Cabo Ortegal is a headland on the Atlantic coast located in the municipality of Cariño (A Coruña), the western limit of the Bay of Biscay and, according to seafaring tradition, a symbolic border between the Atlantic and the Cantabrian Sea, where the Serra da Capelada plunges into the sea. It is the second northernmost cape of the Iberian Peninsula, after Estaca de Bares, and it forms part of the Costa Ártabra site of community importance for its geological, morphological and ornithological value. It opens into a wide arch between Punta do Limo, to the west, and Punta de Os Aguillóns, to the east, where a white and red cylindrical lighthouse stands facing three sea-eroded crags where percebeiros gather goose barnacles (percebe). Its geology, with eclogites and ultramafic rocks, made it a European scientific reference point.
Monument
The lighthouse stands on Cabo Ortegal, the second northernmost cape of the Iberian Peninsula after Estaca de Bares and the western limit of the Bay of Biscay, which marks the symbolic divide between the Atlantic and the Cantabrian Sea; to the west, the cape borders the Ría de Ortigueira, a Ramsar wetland and a special protection area for birds. It is a cylindrical tower painted white and red, overlooking the void above the crags of Os Aguillóns, three rocks already mentioned nineteen centuries ago by Ptolemy under the name Trileuco, which until the 1970s held Spain's most important colony of common guillemots, now extinct; it marks one of the most feared navigation points of the north-western peninsula and is the most visited viewpoint of the municipality of Cariño.
Monument
A coastal watch post built in 1805 at the highest point of the Serra da Capelada, part of a network of lookouts; it commands the cliffs of Vixía Herbeira, which at 613 metres pass for the highest in continental Europe.
Curiosity
The three sharp stacks that rise below the lighthouse were called Trileucum by Ptolemy, probably for their whiteness; until the 1970s they held a large guillemot colony, now gone from this stretch of coast.
Curiosity
Recognised by UNESCO as a global geopark on 24 May 2023, it takes in almost 632 square kilometres spread across seven concellos and is the second geopark in Galicia after the Montañas do Courel, recognised in 2019; it owes the designation to outcrops of rocks of the Earth's mantle considered among the largest on the planet.
Curiosity
The black granite that outcrops at the cape formed some 1,160 million years ago, which places it among the oldest rocks visible in Europe; together with the neighbouring eclogites it documents the continental collision that gave rise to Pangaea.
Nature
A sheltered beach inside the ría de Ortigueira, at the foot of the fishing town, protected from the northern storms by the bulk of the Capelada and looking across to the Ortigueira shore on the other side of the estuary.
Monument
The town's parish church, dedicated to the saint who gives his name to its patronal festivities; it presides over a settlement that only became a municipality of its own in 1988, on splitting from Ortigueira.
Curiosity
An open-cast working in the parish of Landoi that extracts dunite, an ultramafic rock rich in magnesium silicate; its raw material comes from the same geological complex that made the cape famous and is destined for export.
Activity
A theatre festival born in 1978, when Cariño was not yet even an independent municipality; it has continued ever since as one of the longest-running stage events in the north of the province of A Coruña.
Nature
The Vixía Herbeira marks the highest point of the Sierra da Capelada, between the concellos of Cariño and Cedeira, and gives its name to the cliffs that drop to the Atlantic at 613 meters: the highest in continental Europe, and the fourth highest on the whole continent after those of Hornelen, Cape Enniberg and Croaghaun. The area, part of the Natura 2000 Network for the value of its coastal habitats, is crossed by the road linking Cariño with Cedeira, passing the sanctuary of Santo André de Teixido. Atop the cliff stands the garita de Herbeira, a coastal watch hut built in the 18th century and rebuilt in 1805, restored in 2003, which formed part of the network of lookout posts against Norman and English pirates.
Nature
Three sharp islets that rise off Cabo Ortegal, beaten by currents that make this stretch of coast fearsome; they serve as a breeding refuge for seabirds and as a landmark for the estuary's fishermen.
Curiosity
Herds of semi-wild horses graze freely on the hills of gorse and heather that end in the cliffs; their presence is part of the landscape of A Capelada along with the mist and the hollows won from the common hillside.
Historical milestone
After six years of procedures, five parishes on the western shore of the ría separated from Ortigueira in 1988 and formed their own concello; it was the first municipal separation in postwar Galicia.
Historical milestone
Catalan industrialists set up on this shore of the estuary salting factories that later gave way to the canneries; from that impulse came the growth of a port that in 1580 barely gathered two hundred households.
Food and drink
The port's purse-seine fleet lives off the bocarte, the Cantabrian anchovy landed in spring and summer which fed the villa's canneries; it is eaten as salted fillets, fried or marinated.
Activity
A summer event of the place of Lañada devoted to fish caldeirada, the stew the seamen prepared on board with potato and paprika, and to sardines grilled over embers in the height of the season.
Historical milestone
A document of the monastery of San Martiño de Xuvia cites that year the Villa de Carino and Sancto Juliano de Trebula: they are the earliest known written references to this stretch of coast, around the inlet that today gives the concello its name.
Food and drink
The percebeiros climb down the cliffs surrounding the Cape Ortegal lighthouse, the second most northerly on the Iberian Peninsula after the Estaca de Bares, and work at the foot of the Aguillóns, three sharp crags constantly worn away by the sea amid some of the worst breakers in the north, already mentioned nineteen centuries ago by Ptolemy under the name Trileuco, “the three white ones”. The guilds of Cariño, Cedeira, O Barqueiro and Espasante share by agreement the harvesting of this resource in this area, included in the Costa Ártabra site of community importance.
Monument
A whitewashed hermitage of rectangular plan and small bellcote raised over a Roman settlement: in its walls there are reused tegulae and ancient pottery, and its January pilgrimage festival carries legends of pirates and of a saint thrown into the sea.
Nature
A sheltered sandy beach of some four hundred and twenty metres, of fine white sand, opening on the concello's coastline; its shelter keeps it calm even when the north wind punishes this corner of the coast.