Padrón

Until the 9th century the town was called Iria Flavia, an episcopal seat and former Roman colony on the estuary of the Sar. The toponym Padrón emerges during the consolidation of the Jacobean cult, attested in documents from the 10th century. Etymologically it is transparent: padrón comes from the Latin petronem, the accusative of petro/petronis, augmentative of petra. In medieval Galician it designated any large stone used as a landmark or milestone. The Jacobean tradition identifies 'the pedrón' with the stone to which the boat that brought ashore the body of the apostle Santiago after his martyrdom in Jerusalem was moored; that stone is preserved beneath the high altar of the church of Santiago. Although the lexical origin is clear and autonomous from the myth, the two narratives —⁠the stone as Roman milestone and the stone as Jacobean relic⁠— have been intertwined in the village's memory since the 10th century.