We were warned.
Back in Viveiro, a man selling sardines out of a cooler box told Kevin, “Coruña es bonita, pero no es para campers.” He said it with that half-smile Galicians do when they know you’re about to suffer. I think he even winked. Kevin took it as a challenge.
By the time we hit the outskirts of A Coruña, the sky was doing its best impression of an apocalyptic filter — all bruised purples and that heavy, grainy kind of cloud that makes everything feel sticky. Kevin was determined to find “the perfect spot with a sea view and walking access to the old town.” I was determined not to murder him.
Three things happened within the first hour:
- Kevin scraped the top of the van against a low-hanging branch trying to reverse into a spot marked “vehículos autorizados”.
- We got politely honked at 14 times. Once by a child.
- I googled “divorce laws in Spain” and learned some surprising things about Andalusia.
Eventually, we landed in what can only be described as an almost legal parking space near the Torre de Hércules. There were no signs saying “no campers,” just a few suspiciously faded warnings and one laminated A4 note in French that read, “NO TOILET HERE, THANK YOU!”
Close enough.
We walked into the city through that wild, blustery headland — Kevin called it “bracing,” I called it “a neck spasm waiting to happen” — and suddenly, we were in it. A proper Spanish city. No cobbled fishing villages, no sleepy harbours. Just buses, shopping centres, teenagers in football shirts, and the unmistakable smell of doner kebabs after 4 p.m.
And, of course, football.
Apparently, Deportivo were playing that evening. We hadn’t planned on going. But then we passed a bar — crammed full of fans, blue and white flags everywhere, people chanting, plastic chairs dragged out onto the pavement. I could see Kevin’s eyes light up the way they did once at an ABBA tribute night in Benidorm.
So we stayed.
Not at the stadium, no. Tickets were sold out, and we’d already spent most of our weekly budget on tapas (more on that in a second). But we watched from the bar, drinking Estrella Galicia with a crowd of chain-smoking locals who adopted Kevin halfway through the second half because he shouted “¡fuera de juego!” at the right time. No idea what it means, but he got three pats on the back and a fist bump from a man with no teeth.
I, meanwhile, became emotionally attached to a waiter named Lucas who kept bringing me free olives and said I had “the kind of laugh that should be on TV.” I haven’t stopped thinking about that.
The football? A blur. Deportivo lost, I think. But no one seemed to care too much. There was something weirdly comforting about being part of that — the noise, the beer, the swearing at the TV, Kevin yelling like he’d grown up in Coruña, not Croydon.
Later, as we stumbled back to the van, drunk on football and shellfish, Kevin turned to me and said, “You know, I think I could live in a city again.”
Then we reached the van. And saw the parking ticket.
Did I mention we were warned?
