There are places that seem designed to linger in memory, and Punta Nariga is one of them, a rocky headland that plunges into the Atlantic, offering, at the coastline’s frontline, a perspective charged with the immense beauty and the drama of the sea of the Costa da Morte.
Looking West
The Costa da Morte is not only the quintessential stage for tales of shipwrecks or the infamous protagonist of large-scale environmental disasters such as the Prestige tragedy. Costa da Morte is, unafraid of exaggeration, one of the most pristine and scenically privileged stretches of coastline on the Iberian Peninsula, with spectacular places that would dominate the covers of any travel magazine.
It would take days to list amazing spots tucked along and across this western stretch of the A Coruña province that runs between Caión (A Laracha) and Muros, but this time we will stop at one marked by the presence of a lighthouse, perhaps not as well known outside the administrative boundaries of Galicia as other famous examples such as Finisterre, Touriñán or Vilán, though equally hypnotizing.
We also approach, furthermore, this privileged enclave of the municipality of Malpica de Bergantiños to pay homage to the sunset—the solpor, as the Galician tongue calls it, referring to twilight—, and we do so because we are not oblivious to what symbolically this coast represents in the historical imagination. Yet, in Antiquity, the belief held that in this place the death of the sun occurred, the Ara Solis, and although today we know that the world continues beyond the Atlantic Ocean, the truth is that the westward orientation of this coast makes it the perfect lookout to watch the sun vanish over the horizon.
Well, that chosen corner this time is none other than Punta Nariga, a geographical feature that appears at the edge of the parish of San Pedro de Barizo, where it rises imposing against the sea as a contemporary symbol a lighthouse, the last one built in Spain, which, for this reason, not only fulfills its duty as a beacon but also stands out as a key element within the national maritime heritage.
A Lighthouse as a Reference
The Punta Nariga Lighthouse is a project born in the 1990s, designed by the Galician architect César Portela, who opted for a structure integrated into the landscape through lines that evoke the bow of a ship moving toward the ocean.
