Sarria is where most pilgrims start the Camino de Santiago: the last 100 km of the Camino Francés, the minimum distance on foot for the Compostela certificate. It is a small Galician town of about 13,000 people — which means it has no airport, and no direct anything from the United States. Getting there is not hard, but it rewards a little planning. Here are the routes that work, from an agency based one province over.
Step one: get to Spain
From the US you will almost always route through Madrid (MAD), which has nonstop flights from New York, Miami, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles and other hubs. Lisbon and Porto can also work as gateways, but for Sarria specifically, Madrid is the cleanest way in.
Step two: Madrid to Sarria — three honest options
Option A - fly to Santiago de Compostela (SCQ), then transfer by road. The hop from Madrid to Santiago takes about an hour and a quarter, and Santiago airport is roughly an hour and a half from Sarria by road. This is the option most of our American clients choose, because it turns a long travel day into a manageable one: land, get picked up, sleep in Sarria, start walking the next morning. We run private transfers between Santiago airport and Sarria ourselves — it is our home turf.
Option B - the train. Sarria sits on the Madrid-Galicia rail line and has its own station. It is the scenic, unhurried choice; book through Renfe in advance, as seats on the Galicia trains sell out in high season. Count on most of a day for the journey.
Option C - fly to Santiago and stay flexible. Some pilgrims who land early spend their first night in Santiago or Lugo and transfer to Sarria the following morning. Lugo — with its UNESCO-listed Roman walls — is 40 minutes from Sarria and a genuinely underrated overnight.
The one mistake to avoid
Do not plan to land in Madrid and reach Sarria and start walking on the same day. After a transatlantic flight, jet lag is real, and the first stage to Portomarín is a 22 km day. Give yourself one buffer night in Sarria — your legs will thank you on day one, and Sarria itself, with its old town climbing to the Magdalena monastery, deserves the evening.
In a Holy Year, arrival logistics matter double
2027 is a Holy Year on the Camino — the busiest kind of year there is. Trains, airport transfers and first-night beds in Sarria will all be under pressure. If you are walking in 2027, lock the whole arrival chain when you book the walk itself.
The simplest version: a trip where arrival day is already solved — your first night in Sarria booked, luggage transfers arranged and an English-speaking phone that answers. Tell us your dates and we will fit the transfer in.
