The Paseo da Ferradura
A horseshoe walk overlooking the city.
Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez — CC BY-SA 4.0
**A hilltop park west of the old city — and the source of the classic view of the cathedral's towers above the rooftops** — minutes from the Obradoiro square. It was laid out in the **19th century** on what had been municipal grazing land, **and became the city's principal park**. ✅ **It holds the *Paseo da Ferradura*** — a horseshoe-shaped walk looping the hill, ⚠ **and from one particular point along it the famous view appears**: **the cathedral's three towers above a sea of stone roofs**. ✅ **There are ancient oaks and eucalyptus**, **a huge eucalyptus** embraced for luck, **and statues** — among them **the *Marías***, two sisters who walked here every day in vivid colours **and became a popular emblem of the city**. ✅ **Free and always open.**
A horseshoe walk overlooking the city.
Two sisters who became a popular emblem of Santiago.
Oaks and a huge eucalyptus embraced for luck.
Parque da Alameda, 15705 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
**Two sisters who walked in this park every day for forty years — and the story behind it is heavier than it looks.** ✅ **On the surface**: **Maruxa and Coralia Fandiño Ricart**, sisters of Santiago, **went out every day at exactly two in the afternoon**, **in brightly coloured clothes and heavy make-up**, **walking in the Alameda and joking with the students**; ⚠ **becoming a daily sight in the city for decades**. ⚠ **The background is harsher**: **their family were supporters of the left-wing unions**, ⚠ **and after the Spanish Civil War the family was persecuted**: **their brothers were imprisoned or fled**, **and the sisters were socially punished** — **denied work and much ordinary dealing**, **and lived in severe poverty**. ✅ **So their daily, defiant appearance was an act of quiet resistance** — **a deliberate public showing in a city that wanted them hidden**; **and it was understood that way in Santiago**. ⚠ **In their lifetimes they were sometimes treated as a joke.** ✅ **They were rehabilitated after their deaths**: **a painted statue was raised to them in 1994** in this park, ✅ **and they have become an emblem of the city and of dignity under repression**.
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