Culture & traditions

A culture of sea and Enlightenment

Ferrolterra's culture is born of the sea and of the Enlightenment. Ferrol was built in the 18th century as a naval city, with the Magdalena quarter laid out on a grid along Enlightenment lines — one of Europe's first planned townscapes. Around it lies a rural, Atlantic region that keeps the Galician language, its romarías and the trades of the land and the ría.

From that blend come its hallmarks: the shipyards and the navy, the summer festas and verbenas, roots music — with the Ortigueira Festival as the great Celtic gathering — and a cuisine of seafood and garden produce.

Ferrol's Holy Week

Ferrol's Holy Week is a festival of International Tourist Interest (since 2014; national since 1995), with documentary references going back to 1616. Its character is unique: it took shape with people who came from all over Spain to work in the shipyards, and today some 25 processions, run by five brotherhoods, take to the streets between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday.

The Meninas of Canido

In 2008, the artist Eduardo Hermida began painting Meninas inspired by Velázquez on the walls of the then-abandoned Canido quarter of Ferrol. The idea grew with neighbours and artists into an international street-art landmark that revived the district and is celebrated every year. The murals can be walked any day.

The Cabo Ortegal Geopark

At the far north, the Cabo Ortegal UNESCO Global Geopark lays bare a piece of the Earth's mantle: some of the oldest and most unusual rocks on the Iberian Peninsula, in a landscape of capes and cliffs. Geology, landscape and culture meet at the tip of Galicia.