Trevor Huxham

When I lived in Santiago de Compostela , Spain, and taught English , my bilingual coordinator, Fran, and I would carpool every day out to the small town of Boiro on the Atlantic coast. After leaving Santiago, we would exit onto a two-lane highway and pass through one farming community after another on our way to Padrón , where we would pick up the coastal expressway and blast through wooded hillsides to the school where we worked. That first leg of the commute never really sat right with me, as it involved a lot of stop-and-go traffic, steep hills, sharp curves, roundabouts, and low speed limits, and I was always eager for us to finally get out of Padrón and onto the autovía . But these days I’m grateful for the opportunity I had to get to know this small slice of rural Galicia (albeit from the passenger window of a car) since the two-lane highway we would take each morning merged with sections of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route. We would see pilgrims trudging along on the...

Everyday on the way to and from school , I pass through the town of Padrón,  situated about halfway between Santiago de Compostela where I live and Boiro (on the coast) where I work . Just barely inland, Padrón straddles the Sar River before it empties into the estuary called the Ría de Arousa. Sar River A small but proud village of almost 9,000, Padrón dates back to Roman times when it was known as Iria Flavia (which is still the name of a parish to the north of the city center). Today, it’s known for producing peppers of the same name, for being a major stop along the Camino de Santiago, and for being home to two significant poets in the Galician language. Peppers Pementos de Padrón (ignore the eggplant) Even non-Galicians have heard of Padrón at least once, if only for the famous peppers that originated just outside the city center in the parish of Herbón. Brought to the area by Franciscan monks after the Spanish conquest of the Americas, these  pimientos ...