Costa da Morte

The Costa da Morte occupies the northwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula in A Coruña Province. Its common extent reaches from Cape Finisterre to Malpica, though broader definitions run from Muros to A Coruña. Rocky headlands face the Atlantic, and small coastal inlets called rias break the shoreline. Cape Touriñán, north of Finisterre, is the westernmost point of continental Spain.

Roman geographers called the western edge Finisterrae, or Land's End, a limit of the known world. Medieval Christian pilgrims followed the Camino de Santiago toward this coast and gave Finisterre a lasting spiritual identity. Settlement is older still: the area holds one of northwestern Iberia's largest concentrations of megalithic tombs, especially mámoas containing dolmens.

The name Coast of Death records the many wrecks produced by exposed rocks, Atlantic swell and frequent fog. It described a coast whose identity had long been formed by fishing, pilgrimage and dangerous sea passage.