Village
Padrón is a town of around 8,300 inhabitants in the province of A Coruña, in the region of Sar, situated at the confluence of the rivers Sar and Ulla, the latter on its way to the ria de Arosa. Its name comes from the pedrón, an altar of Latin origin dedicated to Neptune that stood on the left bank of the Sar until the 15th century and which medieval tradition reinterpreted as the stone to which the boat that brought the body of the apostle Santiago was moored; it is now kept inside the parish church of Santiago de Padrón. The first documented traces of human presence arrive with the Roman army around the year 26 BC. Rosalía de Castro lived in Padrón, in the Casa da Matanza, now turned into a museum.
Monument
A church rebuilt in 1133 at the instigation of archbishop Xelmírez, according to an inscription preserved in its walls; beside the high altar it keeps a 15th-century stone pulpit with the image of Santiago dressed as a pilgrim.
Monument
A hermitage perched on a rocky outcrop above the town, at the spot tradition points to as the apostle James's place of prayer around the year 40; a spring rises beside it, and a crag venerated since the Middle Ages opens up there.
Monument
Convent of Discalced Carmelites raised in the eighteenth century thanks to the forty thousand duros donated by Alonso de la Peña y Montenegro, bishop of Quito — the works are placed between 1729 and 1762 and the inauguration in 1752 — a Neoclassical building of three storeys with a façade of three arches on pilasters and an image of Saint Joseph carved by the sculptor Xosé Ferreiro, which dominates the centre of Padrón from the hillside.
Monument
A Franciscan house settled since 1396 in the valley watered by the Sar and the Ulla; its friars brought from Mexico the pepper seeds that gave rise to the variety that now bears the name of Herbón and of Padrón.
Monument
Church of the old episcopal see of Iria Flavia, earlier than that of Compostela, which preserves the tomb of the archbishop Rodrigo de Luna with his recumbent effigy, one of the finest funerary pieces of the comarca; beside it extends the cemetery of Adina that Rosalía sang of.
Monument
A group of houses built in the 18th century as the residence of the collegiate church's canons, directly opposite the church of Santa María de Adina; restored, they now house the seat of the Fundación Camilo José Cela.
Monument
A large house at Iria Flavia where Rosalía de Castro spent her last years and died in 1885; recovered by a trust created in 1947 and restored in 1971, it is today the writer's house museum and the seat of the foundation that bears her name.
Nature
A garden declared a national artistic monument on 11 January 1946, thanks above all to Manuel Chamoso Lamas, and laid out along two great T-shaped walks, one of them covered by shade plane trees. Established in the early 19th century on an estate of the counts of San Xoán, next to the Roman Causeway, it mixes Italian, English and French styles. It brings together around three hundred species from around the world, some exotic and unique in Spain, among them a ceibo rioplatense, a sequoia, a dragon tree donated by the Canary community, and a fig tree descended from the one that grew in the house where Rosalía de Castro lived; several specimens are listed in the Galician register of singular trees (senlleiros). After years of neglect, since 1987 it has been restored with a herbarium, a greenhouse and new landscaped areas.
Nature
A tree-lined promenade running parallel to the River Sar, lined with stone benches and old trees; it is the most emblematic space in the centre of Padrón and the place from which the town looks out on the river that gave it life.
Nature
A wooded area of pines, oaks and chestnuts on the slope that climbs to the hermitage, with a viewpoint over the town and the Sar valley; it is reached from the town centre by a long stone stairway.
Nature
At the foot of the town the Sar gives its waters to the Ulla, shortly before the latter opens out towards the Arousa estuary; the meeting of the two rivers explains the river and port vocation Padrón has had since Roman times.
Curiosity
El Pedrón is a Roman altar dedicated to Neptune bearing the inscription NO ORI ESES D S P, interpreted as an offering made by the people of Ourense to the god on their own account; in the 16th century a cross was added to it and the name of the deity was replaced with that of the patron saint, thus christianising the pagan symbol. The tradition recorded in Book III of the Codex Calixtinus tells that the disciples of Santiago moored here the boat carrying the apostle's body, and from this the name of the town of Padrón derives. The altar is kept beneath the main altar of the church of Santiago de Padrón and appears depicted on the town's coat of arms; a replica exists in the French town of Noirmoutier-en-l'Île, a gift to its twin town.
Curiosity
A variety of pepper covered by a designation of origin whose area takes in Padrón, Dodro, Rois, Pontecesures and Valga; it comes from the seeds brought from Mexico by the Franciscans of the Herbón convent in the 17th century.
Curiosity
A hundred and thirty-two stone steps start beside the Convento do Carme and climb to the hermitage on the hill; climbing them is part of the ritual of the pilgrimage festival that gathers the townspeople every 25 July.
Curiosity
Padrón links its name to two of the most cited poets of 15th-century Galician-Castilian lyric poetry. Xoán Rodríguez de Padrón, born in the town in 1390 and died at the monastery of Herbón in 1450, wrote in Castilian and is considered the last poet of the Galician school; little is known for certain about his life, since a legend grew up around his verses that even produced apocryphal biographies, and the events of his own life became mixed with those of the characters in his novel El siervo libre de amor. Like his fellow townsman Macías o Namorado, tradition attributed to him numerous romantic escapades, and both were mythologised in the Cancioneiro Geral of García de Resende. This tradition, in Padrón, is joined centuries later by the names of Rosalía de Castro and Camilo José Cela.
Activity
A Galician cultural institution established on 15 November 1947 by José Mosquera Pérez at the Hotel Compostela in Santiago, under the name Patronato Rosalía de Castro, which adopted its current name at an event held at the Colegio de Fonseca in 1995. It was founded with the aim of restoring the house where the writer spent her last years and turning it into a house museum -today the Casa da Matanza-, of caring for the Panteón de Gallegos Ilustres, and of spreading Galician culture. Among its aims is to promote knowledge of Rosalía, of her husband, the historian Manuel Murguía, and of their children, as well as to promote the study and dissemination of her work and of the Galicia of her time. It has been chaired since 2015 by Ángel Angueira Viturro, the ninth president in the institution's history.
Activity
Camilo José Cela, born in Iria Flavia on 11 May 1916 and baptised in the collegiate church of Santa María de Adina, was a member of the Real Academia Española and received, among other honours, the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in 1987, the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1989 and the Cervantes Prize in 1995; in 1996 King Juan Carlos I granted him the marquessate of Iria Flavia. After his death in Madrid in 2002, the foundation that had received his literary and artistic archive in 1990, based in Iria Flavia, opposite the very collegiate church where he was baptised, preserves his library, his manuscripts and his art collection.
Activity
It is held on the first Saturday in August in the oak grove of the convent of San Antonio de Herbón and is declared a festival of provincial tourist interest; the peppers covered by the designation of origin are tasted there.
Activity
A weekly Sunday market, one of the busiest around Compostela, selling fabrics, farm tools and above all peppers; its fame has sustained the town's trade for generations.
Activity
Every 25 July the local people climb the hill that dominates the town for the pilgrimage at the chapel, with mass, a picnic and a visit to the spring and the crag that tradition associates with the preaching of the apostle James; the climb among granite boulders is the best-remembered part of the festival.
Monument
In the parish of Cruces (Padrón), beside the Camino Portugués, it grew from a chapel raised after 1582 into the present-day temple, whose main altarpiece was completed in 1743 and whose second tower was added in 1885. Tradition holds that the rector of Cruces, Juan Pérez Mondragón, had the first image carved in 1582 after escaping death when crushed by a tree, and placed it above a spring known ever since as Fonte Santa. The sanctuary's name would come from another miracle, that of a pilgrim who in 1732 was cured of dropsy after drinking its water and thanked the Virgin for having freed him «da escravitude» of his ailment. The second tower, symmetrical to the existing one, was paid for with money from a Galician who had emigrated and grown wealthy in America.
Monument
The pazo of Arretén, known as Casa Grande, was built in the 16th century by the hidalgo family of the Bermúdez de Castro at the place of Arretén, parish of Iria Flavia, within the municipality of Padrón. A stone plaque recalls that Teresa de Castro, mother of Rosalía de Castro, was born there on 24 November 1804, and that the writer herself lived in the house. The building was sold shortly after the death of Xosé María de Castro, the family's last owner, and in 1936 it was the scene of an assault by trade unionists following the coup d'état. Today, privately owned, it operates as a hotel of the Vidalferrs group, surrounded by 6.5 hectares devoted mostly to growing albariño vines of the Rías Baixas designation of origin.
Nature
The Sar river, a tributary of the Ulla on its right bank, rises at 335 metres above sea level beside the AVE high-speed rail tunnel of A Sionlla, in the Compostelan parish of Bando; it runs 42 kilometres through Santiago, Ames —where it passes through its capital, Bertamiráns—, Brión and Rois, and empties near Padrón, in the parish of Iria Flavia. Its final stretch is protected within the Natura 2000 network. On its banks stands the collegiate church of Santa María del Sar, a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 1895, and in 2020 a carving of the Virgin, possibly from the 14th century, was found in its riverbed. Rosalía de Castro gave the river its name in her poetry collection En las orillas del Sar. Despite the pollution it suffers from Santiago's discharges, otters, herons and ducks still live along its banks.
Monument
The Casa da Matanza, in Iria Flavia, was the home of the writer and of Manuel Murguía from 1883 until her death in 1885. It opened as a house-museum in 1971 and has been a Monumento Histórico-Artístico (a former heritage-protection category, predecessor of the Bien de Interés Cultural) since 30 August 1974. It is preserved and managed by the Fundación Rosalía de Castro, established in 1947, which restored the house and gathered in it furniture, belongings and personal keepsakes of the writer.
Curiosity
The Pedrón de Ouro has been awarded since 1964 in Padrón by the members of the Fundación Pedrón de Ouro -created by Avelino Abuín de Tembra, Maximino Rodríguez Buján and Octavio Rodríguez Sanmartín- to the person or entity resident in Galicia who has stood out most in the defence and promotion of Galician culture over the year or over their career. Alongside it, the Pedrón de Honra is awarded, for foreign residents who have contributed to the enhancement of the Galician nation and culture, and the Premio Modesto R. Figueiredo. It takes its name from the pedrón, the Roman altar that gives its name to the town itself.
Activity
The Portuguese route enters the concello by the sanctuary of A Escravitude and continues to the town, the penultimate stage before Santiago. It is today the second most travelled of all the roads that reach Compostela.
Historical milestone
The author of Follas novas died in 1885 in her house in Iria Flavia after two years living there. Her death closed the founding stage of the 19th-century Galician literary Rexurdimento.
Historical milestone
In a former beet sugar factory a Francoist camp operated from 1937 with a recognized capacity for 1,700 prisoners, through which some 3,000 passed, many captured after the fall of Asturias and of Catalonia.
Historical milestone
A man from the Salnés suffering from dropsy drank from the spring in 1732, prayed before the image and recovered in three days. In giving thanks for being freed from that slavery he gave its name to the sanctuary that stands there today.
Food and drink
The Franciscans of the convent of Herbón brought the seed from America between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It has held a protected denomination of origin since 1995 and its fame comes from the fact that some are hot and others are not.
Activity
It has been held without interruption since 1978 on the first Saturday of August in the parish of Herbón and obtained the declaration of festival of tourist interest in 2001. The peppers are served fried with coarse salt.
Food and drink
Every Sunday of the year, from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon, the town hosts a market of produce of the land, livestock, clothes and crafts in which the peppers are the most sought-after draw.
Food and drink
The north-eastern end of the Rías Baixas denomination of origin reaches the lands of Padrón, where historic estates such as that of Arretén devote several hectares to the growing of the albariño grape.
Historical milestone
The future author of La colmena and Nobel laureate in literature of 1989 was born in 1916 in Iria Flavia, the old episcopal see prior to Compostela, where he also wished to be buried, in the atrium of the collegiate church.
Historical milestone
Pope Urban II, at the request of bishop Dalmacio, moved in 1095 the episcopal see from Iria Flavia to Compostela and exempted it from all metropolitan jurisdiction; the old Irian city was reduced to a collegiate church and to the houses of the port's fishermen.