Camino de Portuguese Day 11: O Porriño to Redondela
Hiking the Camino de Portuguese from O Porriño to Redondela, Spain | Festa da Coca | June 2026
Despite the time change when crossing from Portugal to Spain and the fact that the sun wouldn’t rise until almost 7, people still began rising and shuffling around in the dorm room around 5, and rather than try to fight it we just gave in and joined them. It was only the break of dawn outside, but we reasoned that we had already walked around the town of O Porriño enough the day before that we didn’t need to see it in the light anymore. Our early start proved to be worth it when we got to see the sunrise behind the mountains as we left the town behind.
The first 5 km of today’s walk weren’t especially scenic, but it was cool and the walking was easy enough. The town of Mos was the first spot that I’d say struck me as beautiful. We took a short break here, and managed to get 2 different stamps in town. Up until this point, we were missing Portugal and thinking that the trail just hadn’t been the same since we crossed the border, but we were still holding out hope that the best was yet to come.
After leaving Mos behind, the trail started leading us up into the mountains and we were surrounded by more nature views, which was a much needed change of scenery after yesterday’s mistake of walking through the industrial area. There was a lot of elevation gain towards the end, but nowhere near as hard as the trail into Rubiaes a few days ago had been. When we reached the top of the hill, we were met with stunning views over our next town, Redondela, and the surrounding mountain and inlets coming in from the ocean. The trail going down into town was even steeper than the one we had walked up to get here, and we were just glad we didn’t have to walk up this!
When we arrived in Redondela, we knew we were entering a bigger town along the route, but since it was Sunday we weren’t expecting there to be much happening. We had been warned that the Spaniards take their Sunday closures seriously, and to not expect many restaurants to be open. However, as we walked through the streets making our way to the Albergue, we were shocked by how many people there were wandering around. Then we came to a narrow cobblestone road that was a part of the official Camino that was heavily decorated by flower petals and pine needles, creating colorful mosaics on the ground. We realized we had probably just stumbled across another festival — but when we saw the words “WELCOME POPE LEO” written out we started to panic, wondering if we had somehow timed our visit perfectly with the Pope coming to this small town?? But after a little research, we learned that it was a general “welcome to Spain” and not this town specifically, as he was visiting Spain that week for the Catholic feast of Corpus Cristi that was happening today.
We arrived at the Albergue, which is a beautiful historic building right in the center of town, and right away noticed that there were quite a bit more people here than we were used to seeing. We had been within the first 10 in line for the Albergue every day so far, but this day we were somewhere in the teens. This was because of a few factors: At this point, the Central trail was now joined by the Coastal trail, which easily doubled the amount of pilgrims searching for beds. Also, we were now under the 100km mark to Santiago, which is commonly known as the busiest part of any Camino because in order to earn a Compostela, a pilgrim must walk 100km to Santiago, meaning we were now walking along with those who had chosen to do the bare minimum and start around Vigo, Spain. And finally, we realized that the holiday could mean that more Catholics doing the pilgrimage for religious reasons could have chosen this week specifically to make their pilgrimage. All this did concern us a bit about our chance at getting bed at all our upcoming Albergues, especially when this one had only around 38 beds!
By the time the Albergue opened, there were already over 38 people in line, and some had to be turned around. But since we had arrived early enough, we had two beds secured for the night. This was a relief especially after I had done a quick search online and seen that most other hostels in the area were booked or much more expensive and off our route thanks to the holiday. We worried about what this might look like for the rest of our hike. We wanted to continue enjoying our hike and not feeling like every day was just a race to the next bed. Obviously booking in advance would solve that issue, but the Albergues were by far the most cost efficient way to hike — anything else would easily double our nightly fee, if not even more than that.
But enough worrying about that. With our beds for tonight secured, we ventured out to see more of the festivities going on. Besides the Catholic feast celebration, there was a local festival in town going on called the Festa da Coca: the festival of the dragon. As best we could figure out, there was some legend about a dragon that came to this town and stole all the virgins and took them to an island. The local sailors then banded together to slay the dragon and save the virgins. We’re not entirely sure if it’s significant that the festival falls on the Feast of Corpus Cristi, but we were here for it! Part of the festival was these people dressed up wearing giant cartoon heads over their heads and dancing in the street next to a small dragon statue thing….it was kind of silly and some of the giant heads looked vaguely racist? We kept hearing about another presentation, ‘the dance of the swords’ and ended up watching it later from the third story window of our Albergue, overlooking the town square (this felt like a quintessential European experience, as everyone in the neighboring buildings were also watching all this from their apartment windows). There was also a marching band/parade, bagpipes, street vendors everywhere all selling the same sweets, pastries, and fireworks. I guess we’ll add Festa da Coca to the list of festivals we’d never heard of before but now can say we’ve experienced!
When things quieted down, we wandered out to go for a walk to see the town, and find someplace to eat for dinner. We walked to a large green space, then made our way to the waterfront and walked on the boardwalk along the shore. We could see people wind surfing across the sound from us, and the supposed island where the dragon hid the virgins(?). It was a beautiful setting, and we walked the boardwalk as far as we could before turning around.
We did struggle to find a place to have dinner. Earlier when we were waiting for the Albergue to open, someone had handed out advertisements for a pilgrim dinner nearby, but that place turned out to be closed (which made us wonder why advertise to pilgrims who are only here for one night, on the night when you’re not open…during a very popular festival no less?) There were plenty of other places that were also closed, or didn’t open until late, and the few places that were opened seemed packed. We eventually ended up in an Irish bar — interesting choice, I know, but Curtis tried to pick the most Spanish option and ordered the Paella.
After dinner, we returned to the Albergue to turn in early. The ‘good’ about this place is that it really is something that we can just stay in this beautiful historic building right in the center of town for only 10 Euro per person with no prior reservations. However, our new crowd of central + coastal + last 100km folks was not the largely courteous pilgrims that we had enjoyed being around up to this point. They lacked the manners and basic consideration that one should have when staying in a public Albergue, especially when in the sleeping areas. Thankfully my ear plugs and eye mask still did the trick and I was able to sleep, but the hardest part for us was how hot and stifling it got up there in the third floor of this historic building. Especially when those closest to the windows decided to not only close them but cover them up with towels, meaning this already non-air conditioned room had absolutely no airflow. But again, we were just happy to have beds here, and if we ever take on another pilgrimage we will take all these things into consideration when planning our accommodations!
