Caldas de Reis

Caldas de Reyes

Camino Portugués · Camino Portugués de la Costa

PontevedraGalicia

Here Camino Portugués and Camino Portugués de la Costa converge. It is one of the points where the pilgrim shares the way with those arriving by another route.

From the Latin caldae 'hot waters' + regis 'of the king': the thermal baths known since Roman times —⁠Pliny the Elder mentions them⁠— passed to royal property under the kings of Galicia and León.

The first element is transparent: caldas, from the Latin caldae (a syncopated form of calidae aquae 'hot waters'), names in Galician, Portuguese and Spanish any settlement linked to a thermal spring. The peninsula preserves dozens: Caldas da Rainha, Caldas de Montbui, Caldas de Malavella. The second element, de Reis —⁠'of the kings'⁠—⁠, particularises the place: the baths were royal property from the reign of Alfonso VII of León, who confirmed the Compostelan chapter's jurisdiction over them in the 12th century. Local legend attributes the name to Alfonso VII, born in these waters in 1105 according to a tradition that historiography has not confirmed but which gives the baths their name. The Galician form Reis is plural —⁠'of the kings'⁠—⁠, not a singular genitive: the property passed through several monarchs and the plural became fixed.

Evolution of the name

  1. Aquae Calidae / Caldas Latin 1st — 5th century
  2. Caldas Reges medieval Latin 9th–12th century
  3. Caldas de Reis modern Galician from the 13th century

Reflections, to the letter

The Carmen spring, in the heart of the old quarter, still flows at 42 °C beneath an 18th-century pavilion; anyone can reach their hands into the steaming water. Beneath the Hotel Balneario Acuña, two excavated Roman baths preserve their original pools. The legend of Alfonso VII's birth —⁠Alfonso Raimúndez, future Emperor of all Spain⁠— in these waters has never been proven, but the town upholds it as foundational. In any case, Caldas de Reis still boils beneath the Roman road that linked Bracara with Lucus: the heat has not changed in two thousand years.

Languages of origin

Themes

Origin status

confirmed

Glossary

Roman road
A stone-paved Roman highway, part of the imperial communications network (Via Aquitana, Via Augusta, Iter ab Asturica); many such roads became medieval routes and, later, stretches of the Camino de Santiago.

Sources

  • Plinio el Viejo — Naturalis Historia, XXXI, 4
  • Filgueira Valverde, X. — Toponimia gallega
  • López Ferreiro, A. — Historia de la Santa A.M. Iglesia de Santiago de Compostela (1898⁠—⁠1909)

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Camino Portugués

  1. Santiago de Compostela
  2. Teo
  3. Esclavitud
  4. Pontecesures
  5. Padrón
  6. Caldas de Reis
  7. San Amaro
  8. Pontevedra
  9. Arcade
  10. Redondela
  11. Saxamonde
  12. O Porriño
  13. ··· toward the start