Village
Sanxenxo is a tourist town of about 18,000 inhabitants, whose population multiplies sixfold in summer, located in the southern part of the Salnés comarca, in the province of Pontevedra, on the coast of the Ría de Pontevedra. It is the Galician municipality with the most hotel accommodation, 13% of the total, and it flies more Blue Flags than any other concello in Galicia. Its tourist expansion began around Silgar beach, now urban, next to which Baltar beach extends, near Portonovo, the municipality's largest population centre. In Noalla salt pans were worked since Antiquity, the origin of the name Salnés. Its name comes from Saint Ginés, and it was officially called Sangenjo until the Linguistic Normalization Law of 1983 changed it to the current Sanxenxo.
Monument
The ermita de Nuestra Señora de la Lanzada is a small, late Romanesque 12th-century chapel in the parish of Noalla, in Sanxenxo, raised at the westernmost tip of the A Lanzada peninsula, next to the remains of the medieval tower and the castro that preceded it on the same headland. It was built on an older church linked to a 10th-century fortress raised to defend the lands of Santiago from Viking and Norman attacks; destroyed by the Arabs in the 13th century, it was rebuilt and finally abandoned in the 16th. Its façade is plain, with a relieving arch and a rose window, and the interior preserves a Baroque altarpiece with the image of the Virgin. In the last week of August its pilgrimage is held, preceded by the bathing of the nine waves on the neighbouring beach.
Curiosity
A fertility rite performed on A Lanzada beach: women who wish to conceive let nine waves break over them at midnight during the Virgin's pilgrimage festival, on the last weekend in August, in a cult of pre-Roman origin.
Nature
A site on the sandy isthmus of Noalla that brings together a castro settlement with its necropolis and the remains of a tower built to protect the salt pans from Norse and Saracen raids; the sea erodes it relentlessly.
Nature
A huge beach pounded by the Atlantic that forms the isthmus between Sanxenxo and O Grove, backed by a dune system included in the protected intertidal complex; it is one of the main surfing spots in the Rías Baixas.
Nature
An urban beach in Sanxenxo (Pontevedra), about 800 metres long, sheltered from the north winds that guarantee good weather in the area, though they can be cold even in summer. Beside it lie the town's promenade and the Juan Carlos I marina, opened in the summer of 2005 to a design by Marta Chaves; this village of seafaring origin built much of its expansion into tourism around it.
Nature
A beach of fine white sand and calm waters located in Portonovo, the fishing town of Sanxenxo, taking its name from the hamlet of Baltar, on the other side of the road that runs along it lengthwise. It stretches from the Chasco quay, at the town's urban boundary, to the rocky punta do Vicaño, which separates it from Silgar beach, over some 600 metres protected by that headland and by the harbour installations. Awarded a blue flag, it is linked to the town centre by a wooden boardwalk running between the dunes and the road. An aerodrome once stood here, from which Galicia's first female pilot, Elisa Patiño, flew.
Monument
The parish church of Bordóns, one of the nine parishes of Sanxenxo, preserves on the wall at the entrance to the cemetery two carved pieces from an old corner canopy that once covered the ossuary at the church's churchyard. They depict the entombment of Christ, laid out on the arch while two men hold the shroud and San Juan takes his left hand before the weeping Virgen, and the martyrdom of San Sebastián, pierced by arrows shot by two executioners. The concello also preserves the hermitages of San Amaro de Arra and Santa Catalina, in the fishing port of Portonovo.
Nature
An open sandy beach on the coast of Sanxenxo, one of the more than twenty that mark the concello's coastline between Portonovo and A Lanzada, on the northern shore of the ría of Pontevedra, facing the Atlantic.
Historical milestone
Alfonso III, who reigned between 866 and 910, granted the salt works of A Lanzada to the church of Santiago; salt was for centuries the primary wealth of this stretch of coast and explains the early ecclesiastical presence in the area.