Galicia. Unlike any other place in Spain

It's true: No matter what people say, the southern coast of Spain is still one of the hottest spots in Europe, but there's another beautiful, not so hot (literally speaking) spot for you to explore. If you're searching for a unique, great place to live and invest in a coastline property, you'll love Galicia--and of course Caión. As it says in IdealSpain.com:

"Galicia is now an increasingly popular destination for those Spaniards who don’t want the heat of the Andalucian, Murcian or Valencian summer but do want the scenic beauty and culinary delights. Along the coast, Galicia has a flourishing economy which now includes its own brand of tourism. The coastline is popular with all manner of outdoor activities that cannot be found along any other coast. It is still a place in which you can enjoy Spain at its simplest and its best."

Harvesting seaweed: an eco-friendly fertilizer

Women working in the fields (Caión)

It's not common practice today, but in a not-so-long-ago past, my family, like other inhabitants of Caión still used this marine resource to fertilize their farmland. My dad would go into the water and haul the seaweed towards the beach, while his sisters gathered it into piles on the sand. They always said that this organic fertilizer was what made the potatoes and famous sweet onions of Caión so tasty! Now this tradition is being studied as a natural alternative to other types of fertilizer (news article in Spanish).

Fisherman and daughter gathering seaweed

When the seaweed—called golfe in Caión and other parts of the Death Coast—appeared on the seashore, each person would haul it inland and set it into piles on a part of Salseiras beach called "auga redondo" (round water) or the "ribeira", near the port. The piles of golfe were marked to make sure other late-comers would not take them; then the "owners" of the piles would stuff the seaweed into a square piece of hand-made sack-cloth and carry it on their backs to the farmland, where they would spread the seaweed on the soil. There was no machinery to help with this tough job that both men and women of the village had been doing from time immemorial.

From the property for sale there are wonderful views of "auga redondo" where seaweed still gathers. The villagers used to walk on these mounds of seaweed because they believed it was very healthy and good for their bones. I've done it myself. The smell is bad but not unbearable, so if it's really as good for you as they say it is, then it's worth putting up with! Today some people harvest seaweed from Caión for use as fertilizer, while others gather and sell it to pharmaceutical companies, who value it for its medicinal properties. Follow this link to see a short 3 minute video about seaweed gathering and uses on the Galician coast (in Spanish & Galician).

Pirates just aren't what they used to be!

In an earlier post I talked about the good and bad changes that this village had undergone throughout the years. One of the good changes is that pirates are long gone... at least the old-fashioned kind. Yes, pirates did visit our coast in the past. I wonder where they came from?

Things got so complicated that the Augustine monks who had settled in Caión in the 16th c. decided they could no longer fight against the invaders. They were tired of struggling and recovering from the pirates' destruction of the crops they had so carefully planted and lovingly cared for, so they finally moved to the nearby city of A Coruña.

Now that there are no more pirates to destroy our crops and our houses, it's no longer a risk to live so close to the sea, as close to it as the monks did!

I should say that this is the story that my great-grandparents used to tell my dad and his sisters, because I've read a pretty different story (in Spanish).