Escarabote. Port. Seafaring Town. Museum

About this heritage

Escarabote is a small coastal town belonging to the parish of Lampón in the municipality of Boiro. It borders to the east with the neighboring borough of Pobra do Caramiñal. Boiro Town Hall is in the most southwestern area of the province of Coruña.

The town of Escarabote has a small port with a central pier, where there are small boats on both sides. On the seawall structure, there are some larger ones and "bateeiros," a type of auxiliary fishing boat used for mussel farming on the rafts.

Escarabote Port has a seafront where they have the social center for senior citizens' meetings, a library, and other cultural events. Recently, they have moved the Sea of Boiro Ethnographic Exhibit to this place – its previous location was in Cruz Cape – to promote the seafaring culture of the area. This new location provides a bigger space for this exhibit, and it is suitable for people with reduced mobility.

A few meters from the Social Center is the small beach of Porto, being only 80 meters long and 5 meters wide. It is an urban beach of white sand and calm waters with peculiar houses whose walls rest on the beach and have bright colors like indigo and white. These constructions, typical of the 60s and 70s, consist of two floors and gable roofs. In front of the beach is the Escarabote Marina, which consists of 140 moorings and provides all the essential services.

Leaving the port to the Conchido area, there is a promenade, suitable for people with reduced mobility, which runs along cliffs, small coves, and beaches of this fishing village. From this promenade, anyone can see mooring boats in the port, the houses along the coast, the Aroña Stone, and the Porto and Gavoteira beaches.

To learn more

Escarabote is a small coastal town belonging to the parish of Lampón in the municipality of Boiro. Many of the houses around the harbor are typical of the 60s and 70s, consisting of two floors and gable roofs. They coincide with the construction of a canning factory right on the port, the Escurís canning factory, which boosted the economic development of the area. The building is still standing, and anyone can see it from the port’s seafront.

The Maritime Ethnographic Exhibit of Boiro is in the Escarabote Social Center, an exhibition revealing the influence that fishing and shellfishing have on the cultural and ethnographic heritage of this seafaring village. Nowadays, fishing is an essential activity, with nine active groups of anglers and shellfish workers, as well as two canneries that provide a significant number of jobs.

The principal objective of this exhibit is to introduce tourism to the seafaring culture. Many people visit it in the summer season since several coastal mini-cruises arrive at the port of Escarabote to visit the town and its surroundings.

The different panels and images of the exhibit provide information about several shellfish harvesting techniques practiced in the municipality on the beaches and boats, such as the use of artisanal fishing creels (nasas) and mussel rafts. Further, visitors can also take a tour through the evolution of the numerous fishing gears used over time.

Shellfishing for bivalves, crustaceans, and cephalopods, inshore fishing, mussels, and the “gamela” (name of a traditional Galician boat) are some of the exhibit's rooms. In them, visitors can observe old traditional fishing gear. These rooms help visitors to interpret the evolution of the seafaring culture and way of life from the techniques used in the past to the most modern and updated ones.

To know it better

Near the port of Boiro, anyone can find Escarabote town with its lovely little beach of fine white sand, often not too crowded. Further, from there, everyone can take a fantastic route on foot between the port of Escarabote and Ribeiriña. Thanks to this path, visitors can enjoy a gorgeous coastal landscape of the Arousa Estuary, including Pobra do Caramiñal, views of the mussel rafts, and Cruz Cape, among oth-ers. On top of that, as travelers walk along the cliffs and go through the small coves, they can see all the typical coastal houses and Porto and Gavoteira beaches.

At the beginning of the year 2020, the Boiro Town Hall decided to move the Marine Ethnographic Exhibit of Boiro from Cruz Cape to the Escarabote Social Center to support the cultural heritage of Boiro by offering the opportunity to know its history, its seafaring culture, and the traditions of the town.