The legend of El banco más bonito del mundo, or The Best Bank of the World, stretches back through the mists of time all the way to 2009. That was when local resident, Rafael Prieto Fernández, placed a bench high on the cliffs of Loiba overlooking the wild ocean and jagged coastline of northern Galicia. The panoramas from the bench are truly the stuff of legend, but it was the actions of some Scottish visitors that transformed it into a cultural icon. It is, after all, just a wooden bench.
It’s said that the Scots were musicians who had been performing at the Ortigueira Festival in 2010 – Scotland and Galicia share a peculiar love of the bagpipes – and it was they who scrawled The Best Bank of the World on the bench. While the sentence seems to make little sense, it’s a play on the Spanish word banco, which means both bench and bank. Landscape photographers brought the bench to wider attention, Instagram has made it world famous.
Curiosity got the better of me. When we visited the absolutely gorgeous Playa de Esteiro I decided to hike the cliff top trail to see what all the fuss was about. It’s hard to convey the beauty of this region, but the views greeting us as we walked through scented pine trees onto the deserted Esteiro beach early one morning, were little short of breathtaking. The wide arc of the beach perfectly framed by rugged cliffs.
Temperatures were forecast to hit 32ºC by midday, so I set off up the gorse and heather covered cliffs while it was still cool. A short, sharp climb quickly brought stunning views back to Playa de Esteiro and along the coast. Words are inadequate to express just how spectacular this stretch of coastline is, but it is one of the most beautiful landscapes I’ve had the pleasure to walk in. Despite it being August it was quiet and peaceful.
Even on a sunny summer day with blue skies and white fluffy clouds, this coastline gives off a very real ‘end of the world’ vibe, a place apart. I can only imagine what it’s like as winds and waves roar into the cliffs in the winter. That sense of isolation is all the more real because for centuries people clustered in the sheltered coves and small ports. You can walk for fairly long periods without seeing buildings.
It was only as I approached Playa do Picon, another picture perfect Galician beach, that I passed through a small village with a few houses and hórreo, the traditional Galician granary. Nearby is a campsite and a car park. After not seeing a soul for a couple of hours suddenly there were people, all heading in the same direction: towards The Best Bank of the World.
There must have been 20 people gathered around the bench, everyone was taking turns to have their photos taken on it. A linguistic joke scrawled on the back of a wooden bench sitting in a dramatic landscape has become a phenomenon in its own right. The views really are special, but I’d passed several other benches on cliff tops that could claim equally famous vistas. These are Galicia’s ‘also-ran’ benches, falling just short of Instagram greatness.
It was tempting to carry on along the coast, but I turned around and made my way back to Playa de Esteiro. It was hot by the time I reached the beach, which was now busy with surfers and sun worshipers. The chilly waters off the coast of Galicia may not be to everyone’s tastes, but to an overheating hiker they were perfect for an exhilarating and refreshing swim.
It is a bench(mark)