Torre dos Morenos (Torre de los Moreno)
Standing improbably in Ribadeo's main square, this ornate modernista tower was built in 1905 by the Moreno family — Galician emigrants who made their fortune in Cuba — and it is one of the finest examples of 'Indiano' architecture on the entire northern Spanish coast. Most visitors walk past it without knowing the story; stop and look up.
The architecture
The tower is a four-storey confection of wrought-iron balconies, glazed ceramic tiles, Moorish arched windows and a distinctive corner turret — a flamboyant collision of Cuban colonial, Art Nouveau and neo-Mudéjar styles that looks entirely out of place among the granite Galician buildings around it, which is precisely the point.
The ground floor now houses a tourist information office, and staff can provide a leaflet (available in English) explaining the Indiano phenomenon — the wave of Galician emigrants who left for the Americas in the 19th century and returned wealthy, building ostentatious houses to prove it.
The broader Indiano trail
Ribadeo has several other Indiano mansions worth spotting on a self-guided walk: look for the Villa Pesqueira on Rúa Virxe do Camiño and the Casa Álvarez near the harbour, both displaying the same eclectic mix of styles.
The Eo estuary coast on both the Galician and Asturian sides is sometimes called the 'Costa dos Indianos' — a short drive east into Asturias reveals even more of these extraordinary houses in towns like Tapia de Casariego and Castropol.
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