Bateas Mussel Rafts

The floating mussel-farming platforms that dot the Ría de Arousa — boat tours include a tasting on board

Admission Boat tours from €15

The defining feature of the Ría de Arousa landscape is the bateas — wooden floating platforms used to grow mussels in industrial quantities. They appear in every direction from O Grove, sometimes in dense clusters, sometimes scattered across the water. Several small operators run boat tours from O Grove harbour: a 90-minute trip out to a working batea, a demonstration of how the mussels are harvested, and a tasting of freshly steamed mussels and Albariño wine on board.

The standard tour is good value and unusually authentic — the boats are working fishermen's vessels rather than glass-walled tourist boats, and the guides are usually the batea owners themselves. Combine with a visit to the harbour fish auction in the afternoon for a full picture of how O Grove's economy works.

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Galicia produces around 95% of Spain's mussels and is the largest mussel producer in the European Union — about 250,000 tonnes a year. The bateas were introduced in the 1940s as a way to vastly increase production: each raft has 500 ropes hanging into the water, on which the mussels grow naturally from larvae floating in the ría. A single batea can produce 80 tonnes of mussels a year. The Ría de Arousa, the most productive estuary, has around 2,300 of them.