This small village in Galicia is utterly unlike any other stop on this list. Sitting 1,300 metres (4,265 feet) up on a verdant ridge, Pedrafita do Cebreiro traces its roots to the era well before the Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula beginning in 218 BCE, when northern Spain was largely populated by Celtic peoples who’d originally migrated here from Central Europe. Here you can still see some of their pallozas – round stone huts with thatched roofs – some now home to an ethnographic museum and shops. In addition to local inns (such as the 9th-century San Giraldo de Aurillac) and pubs catering to pilgrims as well as locals, the main landmark here is the also 9th-century, pre-Romanesque Church of Santa María a Real.

Read more in our post 8 Splendid Stops on Spain´s Way of St. James.

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