Cangas do Morrazo

Cangas — in full, Cangas do Morrazo, the Galician identification the register needs, flagged for the workbook against its Asturian namesakes — faces Vigo across the ría. The Morrazo peninsula's capital lives from the sea in every register: the fleet in the harbour, the canning tradition that the Massó family raised here to industrial art (their great factory ruin on the shore is Galicia's industrial-heritage cause célèbre, the whaling and canning empire's cathedral), and the beaches — Rodeira in town, and over the headland the Atlantic sands of Nerga and Barra facing the Cíes islands, among the finest in the Rías Baixas. History's darkest visit is still told: in 1617 Barbary corsairs sacked Cangas, an atrocity that entered Galician memory and local legend — the town's "witches of Cangas" lore descends from the traumatized aftermath, and the excolegiata church bears the era's scars. Today the calendar runs gentler: seafood festivals, the Corpus flower carpets, and a musical life of bands, choirs and the auditorium's touring visits, as the concert record describes. A ría for a front yard, a ruined cannery for a monument: Cangas keeps Galicia's essentials within one harbour's curve.