Cíes Islands

Interesting facts

The islands are the summits of a coastal mountain range that was partly drowned when the coast sank, the same event that created the Galician rías.

Atlantic storms tend to pass over the islands and unload on the mainland, so the Cíes get only about half the rain of the surrounding Rías Baixas.

Besides the gulls, around 2,500 pairs of European shags nest on the islands.

In 1960 about 400 pairs of the Iberian guillemot bred here; today that seabird has almost vanished from the archipelago.

In 899 King Alfonso III of Asturias included the islands among his gifts to the church of Santiago de Compostela.

A Roman gold ring set with a blue agate engraved with a wild boar, typical of the 2nd century, is among the finds from the islands.

According to the Roman historian Cassius Dio, Julius Caesar besieged Lusitanian refugees who had fled to the islands until hunger forced them to surrender.

Around 1840 the islands gained two fish-salting factories and a tavern, serving a small community that slowly dwindled over the following century.

The islands officially belong to the city of Vigo, yet they are not part of any of its parishes.

Spearfishing has been banned around the islands since 1992, helping protect one of the richest seabeds on the Galician coast.

Why it is worth it

The Cíes Islands rise from the mouth of the Ría de Vigo like a breakwater set there by the Atlantic: three granite islands with a steep, wind-scoured face to the open ocean and a gentle, sandy face turned towards the mainland. The Romans called them the Islands of the Gods, and Pliny the Elder, less poetically, the dry islands. Monteagudo to the north and O Faro in the middle are tied together by a sand bar some 1,200 metres long; on one side it forms Rodas beach, a curve of white sand more than a kilometre long facing water so clear and pale that it looks tropical until you put a foot in it, and on the other it encloses a quiet lagoon. San Martiño, the southern island, stands apart on its own.

The western cliffs are the islands' other character. They drop more than 100 metres into the sea, cut into caves and ledges, and they belong to the birds: the archipelago holds around 22,000 pairs of gulls and is one of the major seabird colonies of Europe. Walking paths climb from the beaches to the summits - the highest point, Alto das Cíes on Monteagudo, reaches 197 metres - and to the lighthouse on O Faro, first lit in the nineteenth century, from where the whole archipelago, the beaches and the open Atlantic are laid out at once. Under the water lie forests of brown algae, and dolphins are regularly seen in the surrounding sea.

People have been here a long time. On the slopes of Monte Faro are the remains of a hill fort with the traces of four or five dwellings from the Late Bronze or Early Iron Age; there are ruins of the monastery of San Estevo, recorded by the eleventh century; and in the late sixteenth century Francis Drake used the islands as a base for his raids on the Galician coast. The islands were made a nature reserve in 1980 and in 2002 became part of the Atlantic Islands of Galicia National Park, and the only place to stay overnight is a seasonal campsite. Rodas won a wider fame in 2007, when The Guardian called it the best beach in the world.

Visitor numbers are capped in season - close to 3,000 a day at the peak - and an authorisation is needed before boarding, so the islands never feel like a resort; everything you carry in, you carry out.

Getting there

The islands lie at the mouth of the Ría de Vigo, about 10 km from Cangas do Morrazo across the water. The nearest airport is Vigo Airport (VGO), about 23 km away. In season, passenger ferries sail to Rodas from Vigo, Cangas and Baiona; the crossing from Vigo takes around 45 minutes.

Cíes Islands

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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