The pagan pleasures of Spain’s Finisterre

It was starting to feel rather spooky on the pathway to Finisterre. Only two days before I’d been in the celebratory environs of Santiago de Compostela with its endless arrivals of jubilant pilgrims. Now dark clouds were scudding across the Galician hills in the distance and the only sound I could hear was the wind blowing – in an accusatory manner, it seemed – through the trees beside me.

While Santiago de Compostela marks the official end of the famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, with the purported remains of St James the apostle in the basement of its cathedral, a minority of hardy souls continue for another 86 kilometres to the Galician coast. Their destination is the small fishing town of Finisterre and the surrounding cape, which exists as the mysterious pagan sibling lurking in the shadows of the Camino trail and its Christian virtues.

In ancient times Finisterre was viewed as the end of the known world. The name Finisterre comes from the Latin finis terrae, which means ‘end of the Earth’. The path to it was walked by pagan pilgrims for centuries before the dawn of Christianity, after which the Christian church leaders appropriated the pagan route – as they did with many of the pagan festivals – for their own ends.

Despite the best efforts of the church, the path to Finisterre and the peninsula on which it lies are littered with reminders of this pre-Christian world. These range from 4,000-year-old stone carvings beside the Camino trail to mámoa and dolmen burial mounds and tombs comprising large megalithic stones dotting the desolate landscape.

In Finisterre the place to go is the Faro lighthouse at the most southern tip of the peninsula. It marks the ultimate end of the Camino – you can literally walk no farther as the rocks plunge into the giant expanse of the Atlantic Ocean that those pagan pilgrims must have gazed at in awestruck wonder upon first encountering.

A short hike from the lighthouse takes you to the peninsula’s highest point, known as Monte Facho. There you encounter the rocky outcrop of Ara Solis – the Altar to the Sun – with its Piedras Santas, or sacred stones. These giant slabs became ‘natural altars for the ancient rites where the world of things and the world of spirits met’, veteran guide John Brierley notes in his Camino Finisterre guidebook. Despite being around ten tons of solid granite, some of the sacred stones will rock rather unnervingly beneath you should you stand on them. During pagan fertility rites that dominated this spot, the movement of the stones proved – or disproved – the virginity of a priestess before she was able to perform certain ceremonial duties. There is a legend about a witch called Orcavella who lived on the mountain in a cave full of snakes. Her MO was to seduce and lure unwary young men into her cave where she then smothered them to death with her embrace. She was said to eat children as well.

Brierley notes that such was the significance of Monte Facho and its mysteries that it motivated the Romans to build nearby the legendary city of Duyo. Legionnaires would retire there to end their days close to where alternative worlds met and to have a better chance of reaching Elysium. In the distance northward from atop Ara Solis you can see Cablo Da Nave – the Ship’s Headland – jutting into the ocean and alluding to the boat that carried the souls of the dead to the Underworld ruled by Hades, Brierley explains. The headland’s final rocky protrusion is said to represent a Roman centurion laid to rest with his helmeted head facing west to the Land of Eternal Youth sought by our pagan forebears.

In between the two headlands curves Praia do Mar de Fora, a beach that exemplifies the untamed beauty and purity of light that suffuses Finisterre. The westward-facing beach’s main draw is the view it offers of bewitching sunsets that must have equally dazzled those pagan pilgrims and the Celtic druids who dwelt here worshipping the sun. I can’t say I blame them. When I first visited Finisterre, I ended up staying ten days, with each of those days ending at the beach being transfixed by another spellbinding sunset.

The magic didn’t end even after the sun had set. One night I watched a so-called moonset from the beach: a half moon gradually sank toward the sea while pivoting on to its side as if tipsily falling over in slow motion. When it finally hit the horizon beyond the sea’s obsidian surface, it turned bright orange and sank as if in flames. Unlike anything I’d ever seen, it remains one of my ‘I’ve-seen-things-you-people-wouldn’t-believe’ moments that Rutger Hauer so poetically tapped in the sci-fi film Blade Runner with his ‘Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion’ speech.

Almost everyone who comes to Finisterre agrees it is a special place. Plenty are those who succumb to the charms and mysteries of this spot that has excited imaginations for millennia. It’s a running joke that people end up staying for longer than they intended – if not indefinitely, in some cases, like those Roman legionaries.

‘This mysterious headland marked the fault line between a Christian point of reference to the east and a pagan orientation to the west,’ Brierley says. ‘Countless thousands have travelled to Finisterre over millennia as witness to some force beyond our understanding.’

Perhaps something about the energy from all those travellers over the ages – all those hopes, joys, fears and sorrows of both pagans and Christians – has seeped into and charged the landscape around Finisterre. One French pilgrim lady I met said its off-the-grid vibes reminded her of Kathmandu in the 1970s. Amid the arriving pilgrims, Spanish tourists and locals, Finisterre contains a fair smattering of hippy types drawn to its nondomicile status from mainstream culture. Others note Finisterre’s potent mix of positive and darker energies. Near the friendly hostel I stayed at was another full of broody alternative traveller types; the building itself seemed to emit a force field of passive aggressiveness every time I walked by it.

Beyond the neat veneer of seafood restaurants that line the small harbour with its bobbing fishing boats there’s a fair bit of sex and drugs to be had for those who are looking. The staff at my hostel were still abuzz about events a couple of nights before my arrival. Two pilgrims had taken to the hostel garden to perform their own fertility rite, apparently going at it like hammer and tongs for two hours, as the rest of the hostel had to listen on from their beds.

‘It was extraordinary, I’ve never heard anything like it in my life,’ one of the female staff told me with wide eyes and a big smile. ‘He didn’t make much noise but she was embracing every ounce of her freedom – good for her, I say.’

Indeed, once the bars shut and the illegal bonfires begin on Finisterre’s beaches, while good Christians are tucked up in bed the night-time ambiance undoubtedly takes a more pagan turn beneath those sacred stones – as the rocky Roman centurion gazes on.