Getting Your NIE Number in Spain
What a NIE actually is Before we could open a bank account, sign anything with a notary, or even register with the town hall, we needed a NIE number. It is one of those things nobody explains properly before you…
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Mistakes to Avoid When Moving to Spain
Spain rewards patience and punishes assumptions, and most of the trouble people run into comes down to a handful of predictable missteps. The first is underestimating how slow and fragmented Spanish administration can be. Rules that apply in Madrid are…
Fervenza de Fondós: The View You Won’t See From It
We almost drove past Fervenza de Fondós the first time, and in a way that is the whole point of the place. It sits tucked into the parish of Erbedeiro, in the municipality of Carballedo, in the Chantada area of…
Empadronamiento in Galicia: How to Register at the Town Hall
Of all the bureaucratic steps involved in moving to Spain, empadronamiento is probably the one that gets the least attention abroad and causes the most confusion once you actually arrive. It sounds like a minor formality, registering your address with…
The Origin of the Camino de Santiago
Every year hundreds of thousands of people walk into Santiago de Compostela with blistered feet and a sense that they have arrived somewhere important. Few of them stop to ask why this particular city, tucked into the green hills of…
Camino Pozas de Melón and the Tourón Waterfall
Melón is a small municipality in the province of Ourense, along the river Cerves. We went there for one reason, to walk the trail that follows the river to the Pozas de Melón and on to the Fervenza de Tourón,…
Praia da Cova: A River Beach in the Heart of the Ribeira Sacra
Somewhere between the reservoirs of Belesar and Os Peares, the river Miño widens enough to fit a small beach. It is called Praia da Cova, in the municipality of O Saviñao, not far from the meander everyone around here calls…
Alto do Coto: Hiking Routes and How to Get There
The viewpoint of Alto do Coto sits on top of the Serra das Penas, in the municipality of Bóveda, on the northern edge of the Ribeira Sacra in Lugo province. At 650 metres, it is one of the higher points…
Santa Compaña: Ghost Legend Explained
Some places have local legends that stay tucked away in books. Galicia has one that seems to follow you around, in the shape of the road signs pointing to remote chapels, in the way older houses are built with certain…
Retiring in Galicia, Spain
When people think about retiring in Spain, Galicia rarely comes up first. The conversation usually starts with the Costa del Sol, or Alicante, or maybe the Balearics, places with decades of established expat infrastructure, English-speaking real estate agents on every…
Flying a Drone in Galicia
Anyone who follows this site for a while notices a pattern in the photography. Wide shots of river valleys, miradoiros, terraced vineyards, the odd waterfall, but never a face. That is not an accident, and it is not only about…
Power Cuts in Rural Galicia: What to Expect
We had been in our house near the Miño for barely a few weeks when the lights first went out. A storm had rolled through that evening, the kind with real wind behind it, and partway through cooking dinner the…
Cabo do Mundo, the Most Photographed Miradoiro
We are filing Cabo do Mundo under Hidden Gems, though we will be honest that the name does not really fit. This is, as far as we can tell, the single most photographed viewpoint in the entire Ribeira Sacra. Search…
Pulpo a Feira: Galician Food Culture
If there is one dish that sums up Galicia, it is pulpo a feira. Boiled octopus, sliced into rounds, laid out on a wooden plate, and finished with olive oil, coarse sea salt, and a dusting of pimentón. No sauce,…