Finisterre
Fisterra
A Coruña · La CoruñaGalicia
Transparent Latin toponym Finis Terrae ('end of the earth'), fixed by the Roman geographers of the 1st century to name the westernmost known cape of Gallaecia. The native Galician form Fisterra preserves the pronunciation of the compound without the phonetic Castilianisation Finis > Finis, while the Castilian Finisterre adds the final paragogic -e. Both forms coexist in current official documentation, with Galician institutional preference for Fisterra.
Evolution of the name
- Finis Terrae Latin 1st century
- Finisterra medieval Latin 5th–12th centuries
- Fisterra / Finisterre Galician and Castilian from the 12th century
Reflections, to the letter
Cape Fisterra is the destination. From the 19th-century lighthouse —built in 1853, today also hostel and restaurant— opens the Atlantic horizon to the west: 5,500 kilometres without interruption to Newfoundland. The iconography of the place concentrates symbolisms: km 0.00 of the Camino, marked in stone next to the lighthouse; the monument to the pilgrim looking at the ocean; the rock of the Ara solis, where a stone of one thousand six hundred kilos with three carved concavities is preserved that may have served to deposit pre-Christian solar offerings; the secular tradition of burning the clothes one has walked in, vestige of the Roman rite of farewell to the sun. The Romanesque 12th-century church of Santa María das Areas, at the foot of the village, guards the 14th-century Christ with real hair and beard —donated by sailors— and the tradition of votive candles lit by shipwreck survivors. And the entire town, wedged between the beach of A Langosteira and the Monte do Facho, preserves the medieval fishing layout intact.
Glossary
- Ara solis
- Pre-Christian altar dedicated to the sun, attested by Roman sources at Cape Finisterre and described as ritual destination of farewell to the star at the summer solstice. Archaeological excavations directed by Antonio de la Peña in 1991 and 2004 brought to light a flat stone of 1.2 tonnes with three carved hollows, tentatively dated to the Iron Age, that may have been part of the altar. The tradition of burning the clothes at the cape preserves, divested of its religious charge, the gesture of the solar rite.
- Mare Tenebrosum
- Medieval denomination of the Atlantic Ocean west of the finistere capes, 'sea of darkness', in opposition to the known and navigable Mediterranean Mare Nostrum. Medieval cartographies until the 13th century placed in this ocean sea monsters, submerged cities (Atlantis) and a flat horizon where ships fell off the precipice. The denomination falls into disuse after the Portuguese voyages of the 15th century and the empirical proof of Atlantic curvature.
Sources
- Estrabón — Geografía, III, 1, 4
- Plinio — Naturalis Historia, IV, 22
- Romero Masiá, A. — O Camiño a Fisterra
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Camino de Finisterre y Muxía