For a century and a half, the defining fact about Galicia was who left it. Starting in the 1850s, waves of Galicians crossed the Atlantic to Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, driven out by land so fragmented through inheritance that…
Galicia is greener and wetter than most people picture when they think of Spain, and that shapes what lives here. The dense oak and chestnut forests, the countless rivers running down from the interior toward the coast, and the general…
Sometime in the last week of July, in Busan, South Korea, a committee we will never meet decides something that could change the place we live. The Ribeira Sacra Waterscape, the terraced vineyards, the river canyons, the monasteries carved into…
Drive through almost any parish in the Ribeira Sacra and you will pass at least one house with the shutters closed, the garden gone to bramble, and a roof slowly giving way to moss. Sometimes it is one house. Sometimes…
By now we can understand a full conversation in Spanish, even if we don’t speak it fluently ourselves yet. We understand what’s being said at the bar, follow the woman at the ayuntamiento, and can follow a heated discussion about…
The first time this comes up isn’t when you’re settling into village life, it’s much earlier, at the moment you start putting together the paperwork for your TIE. Somewhere on the list of requirements is proof of health insurance, and…
We first heard the term “blue zone” applied to Galicia on a boat trip along the Miño, through the Lugo stretch of the Ribeira Sacra. The guide was pointing out villages along the bank and mentioned, almost as an aside,…
Discover Galicia on Foot: The Best Hiking Apps for Exploring Nature Galicia, in the northwest of Spain, is a dream destination for nature lovers. With its dramatic Atlantic coastline, green forests, mountains, rivers, and hidden trails, it offers some of…
If you’re planning a holiday in Galicia or preparing to walk the Camino de Santiago, you may have heard stories about wild boars roaming the countryside. News reports often mention boars damaging farmland, crossing roads, or even wandering into villages.…
Hidden in the heart of Galicia, in northwestern Spain, lies one of the country’s most spectacular wine regions: Ribeira Sacra. Famous for its dramatic terraced vineyards carved into the steep slopes of the Sil and Miño river valleys, breathtaking landscapes,…
One of the things we still haven’t gotten used to, in the best way, is how little a proper meal out costs here. We eat the menu del día regularly, sometimes once a week, sometimes more, and it never stops…
When we first moved to Ribeira Sacra, the siesta felt like an inconvenience. We would plan a trip to the shop for something small, only to find the shutters down and the street empty between two and five in the…
We live inland, in the Ribeira Sacra, so the orcas that have made headlines along the Galician and Iberian coastline are not something we have encountered ourselves. But it is a topic that comes up often enough among people considering…
When we arrived in Galicia, importing our car was one of the first things we tackled, and we deliberately didn’t wait around. Insurance on a foreign-plated vehicle only covers you for a limited number of months once you’ve become a…