A map of everything Galicia has to show
34.957 places —hillforts, dolmens, petroglyphs, monasteries, stone crosses, granaries, lighthouses, waterfalls, manor houses, beaches, ports— on a map with the look of an old engraving, in 10 languages and with its own inventory for each of the 313 municipalities.
What makes it different
Nothing is assumed: it is measured
How much each place matters is not an opinion. Real Wikipedia visits over the last year are compared, adding up every language version. That is why Santiago cathedral, the Tower of Hercules and the walls of Lugo come first, and why you can find the hidden gems: places with a lot to see that almost nobody looks up.
It updates itself
Wildfires every fifteen minutes, cetaceans every six hours, the photos when you tap a place, and the whole catalogue by scheduled jobs. No source requires a key or a payment.
Every piece of data says where it comes from
Wikidata, OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia, Commons, NASA, GBIF. The entry states the source and, when a photo was matched by proximity rather than with certainty, it says so too.
Built on what people actually search for
12,981 queries collected from the autocomplete of Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo. Out of them came the pages by area (33 % of searches are «what to see in X»), the plans by days, the filter for going with children and the tourist regions —Costa da Morte, Ribeira Sacra, Rías Baixas— that people use even though they are not official divisions.
No infrastructure cost
There is no database, no tile server, no paid API. The coast, the rivers, the Caminos and the municipal boundaries are drawn from our own geometry. The monthly cost is the domain.
Who it is for
Those visiting Galicia
Search by area or by theme, filter by what matters when travelling —near me, free, accessible, with children, when there is only one day— and put together a trip that orders itself and prints.
The municipalities
Each municipality has its state of its inventory: how many places it has documented, how many without a photo and the named list of what is missing. The Galician average today is 17 %. It is not a reproach: it is a map of the gaps, and every one of them can be filled from public sources.
Those who study or teach
The whole catalogue can be consulted, each entry points to its source and the method is documented in the repository.
What it still does not do
It is not a guide to restaurants or hotels, and it does not try to be: we do not have that data and faking it would be worse than not having it. Festivals are thinly covered because Wikidata barely records them. Only 245 places have published opening hours, because that is what there is on OpenStreetMap. And the photographic record is uneven: there are municipalities below 6 %.
All of that has a fix, and the fix is public: add it on OpenStreetMap, on Wikidata or on Commons. There is no need to come through here.
Where the data comes from
All the sources are open and are detailed in licences. In short: the data belongs to everyone, and what is added here —the classification, the icons, the measure, the design and the software— is our own work.
If you are reading this with a machine —or asking one about it— there is a plain-text summary with what is here, where it comes from and, above all, what this catalogue does not know: how much is left to photograph, that the municipality ranking measures volunteers and not heritage, and that festivals have no exact point.
Who makes it
mapagalicia.es is a project by Miguel Gamboa, software engineer from Betanzos. It was published not for profit and keeps growing.
In the press
What has been published about this map, with the date and a link to the original. Nothing else: if an outlet has not written about it, it is not here.
La Voz de Galicia · · Pauli González
Miguel se cansó de hacer siempre lo mismo y encontró 33.000 opciones en Galicia
It appeared in print: Ya Es Sábado, page 32.
Radio Galega · A Tarde ·
Entrevista a Miguel Gamboa en A Tarde, da Radio Galega
The station does not publish the episode at an address of its own; the full audio and the summary are on the interview page.
Quincemil (El Español) · · Paula Quintás
Un joven crea un mapa con el patrimonio de Galicia: «Si viene un japonés, quiero que use mi app»
The same text was also published in MSN España.