Codeseda

The last great name before Santiago is a plant's. Codeseda is a collective plant-name: the codeso —⁠the yellow-flowered leguminous shrub, Adenocarpus, that turns these hills gold in spring⁠— plus the suffix -eda, from the Latin -eta, which in Galician forms place names meaning 'thick with': a codesal, a place of codesos, as carballeda is of oaks or salgueda of willows. There is no dispute: the plant is in plain sight in the hills of the Testeiro, and the name says nothing else. Fernando Cabeza Quiles records it so in his study of the toponymy of A Estrada. The parish also keeps the memory of a monastery of Augas Santas, from before 1164, on the final stretch of the Camino toward the Apostle.