Cortegada

Cortegada is a small municipality in the province of Ourense in Galicia, northwestern Spain, part of the thermally rich geothermal zone along the Miño River valley where the ancient granite basement of Galicia produces sulfurous hot springs at temperatures among the highest in the Iberian Peninsula. The sulfurous waters of the Cortegada area belong to the same remarkable geothermal system that makes the Ourense basin the most thermally abundant zone in Spain, where dozens of thermal springs emerge along the river valleys in a concentration unmatched elsewhere in the country. The village and its thermal tradition form part of the pilgrimage and wellness landscape of southern Galicia, near the Portuguese border in a countryside of granite churches, river estuaries, and traditional Galician vine-growing on pergola structures called 'parras.' Cortegada's thermal waters represent the most elemental and authentic expression of Galicia's geothermal abundance — hot, powerful, and emerging directly from the ancient rock of the Iberian Massif.