Town of the Camino

O Pedrouzo

Also known as Arca, O Pedrouzo is the doorstep of Santiago de Compostela: the last big stop on the Camino Francés, about 19 km from the Obradoiro.

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The Town

Discover O Pedrouzo

O Pedrouzo, capital of the concello (municipality) of O Pino and also called Arca after its parish, is the last stop on the Camino Francés before Santiago: about 19 km remain to the Praza do Obradoiro, a single stage. It has no old quarter and no great monuments, and it does not need them: it is a service town strung out along the N-547, where within a few hundred metres you can sort out dinner, the shopping, the pharmacy and breakfast; some places open before dawn. The Camino does not go through the town: at the signposted junction you have to turn left to drop down into the centre, and the next day you rejoin the route with hardly any detour. What there is to see lies on the approach from Arzúa: the alto de Santa Irene, with its eighteenth-century chapel and a spring with a long-standing reputation, and, shortly after Salceda, the monument to Guillermo Watt, a pilgrim who died there in 1993. Pilgrims from the Francés, the Primitivo and the Norte converge here, and every afternoon hundreds of people gather who will walk into Santiago the following morning. There are more than thirty places to stay — albergues, guesthouses and apartments — almost all on the main street; a kilometre and a half before it, right on the route itself, the hamlet of A Rúa is a quieter alternative. The day allows few variations: you arrive from Arzúa in about 19 km, or shorten it by sleeping in Salceda, which leaves only about 8 km; and you set off for Santiago in one go, or split the last stage at Lavacolla, about 10 km on, to leave less than ten to the cathedral.

In the town itself, what there is can be seen on a short walk: the parish church of Santa Eulalia de Arca, neoclassical and with mass in the afternoon, the cruceiro (stone wayside cross) that presides over the roundabout at the entrance and, a little way off, the pazo da Pena (a Galician manor house). Santiago is twenty minutes away by car or bus, so anyone who arrives early can go over and see the city without their backpack and save the walk in for the next morning, which is the one that counts.

Last updated: 23/08/2026

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