Turismo de Galicia

Situated between the estuaries of Arousa and Muros e Noia, the park covers about 1,000 hectares. It consists of the dunes, Corrubedo beach and the lagoons of Vixán – of fresh water – and those of Carregal, of salt water. Among rushes and reeds, both are home to the 3,000 waterfowl that live here: teals, curlews, spoonbilled ducks, sandpipers and plovers. A world of feathers and squawks to which is added the laughter and races of the playful otters.

The moving dune in this open space between the Ría Arousa and that of Muros and Noia is impressive in size, more than a kilometre long on its curved advancing front. During the hardest winter months it reaches twenty metres high. It is calculated to be between 200 and 250 metres wide; although it seems that it was larger in the past. Somewhere between legend and exaggeration, it was documented that at the end of the 19th century the dune was more than 60 metres high. To windward, facing the sea, it is long and low lying, like the back of an animal. It drops to leeward, towards the ground, and with no vegetation to hold it back advances across the plain at a speed of two to three centimetres a year.

The omnipresence of the queen of the Park should not make us forget the other Park’s attractions: two lagoons, one of salt water and the other of fresh water, with extensive mud flats connected to them and internationally important wetlands.

Vixán, the fresh water lagoon, is fed by the waters of the modest Muíño stream, subject to seasonal fluctuations in water volume. Carregal, the salt water lagoon, is connected to the ocean, dividing in two the long beach facing the rocks called Pedras da Ferreira. The rise and fall of the tides is via this channel, one of the central points of the Corrubedo complex. The rich ecological life of the Park is reaffirmed in the mud flats which are teeming with life, and all this in little more than one thousand hectares.