Atlantic Islands of Galicia National Park

Overview

The Atlantic Islands of Galicia National Park protects four island groups sitting across the mouths of the Rías Baixas: Cíes off Vigo, Ons in front of the Pontevedra estuary, Sálvora at the northern entrance to the Ría de Arousa and Cortegada well inside it near the mouth of the Ulla. It is the only national park in Galicia, created by Law 15/2002 on 1 July 2002 and the thirteenth national park declared in Spain.

Most of it is water. The park covers 7,285.2 hectares of sea against 1,194.8 hectares of land, spread across the municipalities of Vigo, Bueu, Vilagarcía and Ribeira in the provinces of Pontevedra and A Coruña. Under the surface are brown algae forests of Saccorhiza polyschides and Laminaria, and maerl beds of calcareous algal debris that shellfish burrow into, all of it covered by the OSPAR Convention on the north-east Atlantic.

Which island you pick matters; they are not interchangeable. Cíes is the beach and cliff walk, busy and quota-controlled. Ons is the one still inhabited, with a lighthouse road, a lived-in village and dune-backed sand at Melide. Sálvora is an abandoned village and a lighthouse you can only see with a guide. Cortegada is a wet laurel forest around a ruined hamlet, with one of the few island stands of Pyrenean oak on the Atlantic coast on the neighbouring islet of Malveira Grande.

Protection stacked up over four decades: Cíes as a natural park in 1980 and a Special Protection Area for Birds in 1988, national park status for all four groups in 2002, OSPAR coverage in 2008 and Ramsar listing in 2021. The pressure is real, with 490,888 visitors recorded in 2025, which is exactly why the daily caps and the authorisation system exist. Plan the paperwork first and the day works; turn up hoping to buy a ticket and you will be looking at the islands from the harbour wall.

History

Bronze Age to the Romans

The oldest settlement traces in the park are on Cíes. Archaeologists place a Bronze Age village called As Hortas on the slope of Monte Faro, with shell middens showing a diet built on shellfish and fish from the water immediately around the islands, and imported ceramics pointing to trade with mainland communities. Ons has two unexcavated castro sites, Castelo dos Mouros above the Canexol houses and Cova da Loba in the north.

Monks, lords and pirates

The islands entered the written record as church property. King Alfonso III gave the Cíes to the Cathedral of Santiago in 899, the same year the first document names Ons as “Aones” in a donation to the Compostela chapter. Two small monasteries went up on Cíes in the 11th and 12th centuries, San Esteban on the middle island and San Martiño on the southern one, attached to the Benedictines in 1152 and to the Franciscans in 1377.

Forts, salting plants and lighthouses

What you actually walk past today mostly dates from the 19th century. In 1810 an artillery store was built inside the shell of the San Esteban monastery on Cíes, later a barracks and then a prison near Nosa Señora beach; the same year the Provincial Arms and Defence Council fortified Ons, where the Castelo da Roda stood a few metres from the Curro pier. With some security restored, people came back and industry followed.

The Cíes passed to the jurisdiction of Vigo in 1840, and two salting plants opened, one on the north island where the Rodas restaurant now stands. Ons got its first salting factory between 1835 and 1840, which turned subsistence farmers into fishermen and pulled in settlers from the coast. The Cíes lighthouse dates from 1852, and by 1900 the salting sheds had lost out to the canning factories on the mainland and were reduced to warehouses.

Cortegada took a stranger route. Vilagarcía and Carril gave it to King Alfonso XIII, the donation act signed on 19 August 1907 when 17 families, about 72 people, still lived there. The final deed followed in Madrid in July 1910, by which point the royal family was building the Magdalena Palace in Santander instead, and Cortegada was left empty as a hunting ground.

Emptying out, then protection

Depopulation ran through the middle of the 20th century. The state expropriated Ons for national defence in 1940, handed it to the Ministry of the Army in 1943 and took it back in 1960; a run of agencies followed, none of which built the harbour the islanders needed, and by the time ICONA arrived at the Civic Centre in 1979 most families had moved their main home to the mainland. Sálvora’s last residents left in the late 1970s, leaving a caretaker and his family.

Cíes was declared a natural park in 1980 and a Special Protection Area for Birds in 1988. The four archipelagos were joined into a single national park by Law 15/2002 on 1 July 2002, the thirteenth in Spain. The park’s waters came under the OSPAR Convention in 2008 and the whole site was listed as a Ramsar wetland in 2021.

Visiting

Getting the authorisation

Nobody lands here on impulse in summer. For Cíes and Ons you need a free Xunta de Galicia authorisation before buying a boat ticket, compulsory during Holy Week, from 27 March to 5 April, and from 15 May to 15 September. Apply at autorizacionillasatlanticas.xunta.gal, choosing your island and whether you are a day visitor, a camper or a resident, then take the code to an authorised boat company.

Outside those dates the system inverts. Cíes and Ons can then only be visited in an organised group with a National Park accredited guide, at no more than 25 people per guide, arranged directly with an authorised boat company rather than through the Xunta portal.

Which port to sail from

Boats for Cíes run from Vigo, Cangas and Baiona; for Ons from Bueu, Sanxenxo and Portonovo. Sálvora is reached mainly from O Grove and Aguiño, with other departures from Ribeira, Boiro, A Pobra, A Illa de Arousa and Vilagarcía; Cortegada is served from Vilagarcía and Carril. Companies reset routes and timetables each season, so check before planning a day around them.

On Cíes

The Cíes archipelago is three islands, Monteagudo, Faro and San Martiño, plus a scatter of islets, and covers 3,091 hectares of which only 433 are land. Everything you can walk is on Monteagudo and Faro, linked by the sand bar of Rodas beach; San Martiño has no public-use areas at all. Four colour-coded trails start from the park information booth by the pier, and all four are linear, so the posted times cover the outbound leg only.

The climb most people make is the lighthouse route up the western side, where the ocean-facing cliffs rise more than 150 metres. The Cíes visitor centre sits a kilometre from the port on that same path, in an old artillery warehouse built over the San Esteban monastery ruins, and normally opens afternoons in high season.

On Ons, Sálvora and Cortegada

Ons is the only island in the park still lived in, and its four marked trails are circular rather than linear, which makes a half day easier to plan than on Cíes. The park warns that because the island is inhabited there are far more tracks than marked routes, so it is easy to stray into a restricted zone or miss your boat back. The Ons visitor centre occupies the old schoolhouse in the Curro neighbourhood by the landing point and covers island life, customs and work rather than ecology.

Sálvora works differently. Its abandoned village can only be entered with a park-authorised guide, for safety as much as conservation, and the exhibition in the old salting warehouse turned pazo, next to the pier, holds ethnographic pieces recovered from the village itself. Cortegada is the quiet one, flat, inside the Ría de Arousa rather than facing the ocean, with a damp laurel wood around its abandoned village and hermitage.

For context before you sail, start at the Atlantic Islands Visitor Centre at Rúa Palma 4 in Vigo’s old town, behind the Concatedral. Winter opening, from 1 October to 14 May, is Monday to Thursday 10:00 to 14:00 and Friday and Saturday 10:00 to 14:00 plus 16:30 to 19:30; from 15 May to 30 September it runs Tuesday to Saturday 10:00 to 14:00 and 16:30 to 20:00, closed Mondays.

Tips

• Get the Xunta authorisation before you look at boat timetables. It is free, it is separate from the ticket, and without the code the operator will not sell you a crossing for Cíes or Ons between 15 May and 15 September or over Holy Week.

• Going in low season means going with a guide. From mid September to mid May, Cíes and Ons are open only to organised groups run by authorised companies, so book through the operator rather than the Xunta site.

• Sálvora and Cortegada never work as walk-up day trips. Both are guided-group only all year, with quotas of 250 and 150 to 250 people a day respectively, and no scheduled daily service; you contact a boat company and join a group.

• Carry all your water. There is no potable supply on the islands and the public fountains are not certified as safe to drink.

• Sign up for the free guided itineraries at the island information booths as soon as you land. The park runs them through the summer at no charge, but places are limited and the timetables are posted on the island, not online.

• Wear shoes you can climb in. The lighthouse routes on Cíes gain real height above cliffs of more than 150 metres, and the surface is dirt and stone, not boardwalk.

• Remember the Cíes trails are one way. All four signposted routes are linear, and the posted duration counts the outbound leg only, so double it before deciding whether you can make the last boat.

• Bring a wetsuit if you plan to snorkel. Snorkelling and diving are allowed in the bathing areas, but the park puts summer water temperature at around 15 degrees and a lead belt needs a diving permit obtained in advance.

• Eating on the islands is possible but thin. Cíes has the campsite restaurant plus a handful of bars, and Ons has three places in the Curro area, all of them open only while the regular boats are running.

• Pack binoculars for the hides. Two seabird observatories on Cíes sit close to breeding cliffs, one near Pedra da Campa and one by the Monteagudo lighthouse, built so you can watch without flushing birds off the nest.

• Call the park office on +34 886 218 090 if something is unclear. It is at Oliva 3 in Vigo and answers questions the boat companies cannot.