Getting to Santiago: train, bus, car and plane

Since June 2025, Santiago has had an intermodal station — the Daniel Castelao — where train and bus share the same building, linked by a pedestrian footbridge. It's a marked upgrade on the old station, with a concourse almost three times bigger. The dedicated 900-space car park is still being built: Adif started work in mid-2026 with a nine-month schedule, so the realistic date is 2027, not 2026 as originally announced. From there, the old town is a 10-15 minute walk.

By train

The Madrid connection is the busiest: around 18 AVE high-speed trains run daily in each direction. Duration varies quite a bit by service — the fastest run about 3 hours 15 minutes, while Alvia trains with more stops can take over 4 hours 30 minutes — so it's worth checking the specific timetable before booking. Prices are just as elastic: booked ahead, Turista class tickets start at €19-21, though the average fare sits more around €54-68, and Preferente can reach €138.

Within Galicia, Media Distancia and Avant trains are frequent and cheap: to A Coruña the journey takes 30-40 minutes and costs under €10, to Vigo between one hour and one hour twenty, and to Ourense around 30-40 minutes on the high-speed line.

By bus

Monbus is the go-to operator for getting around Galicia. To A Coruña there are more than 20 daily services, taking about 79 minutes from €8; to Lugo, departures roughly every three hours, with a 1-hour-55-minute journey priced €9-15.

For longer distances, ALSA connects Santiago with Madrid via more than seventeen daily services — the first around 05:45, the last at 22:30 — a journey of 7h55 to 8h45, with fares from €19 booked ahead. It's slower than the train, but noticeably cheaper if booked early.

If what you need is the journey in reverse — finishing the Camino and getting home — we've given it its own guide: leaving Santiago, covering Madrid, Porto, Ferrol and Fisterra, and what to do on the day there are no tickets left. And if Santiago is only your stopover before walking, the guide you want is how to reach the start of the Camino: Sarria, Ferrol, Tui or O Cebreiro, which is where plans break.

By car: how to get to Santiago de Compostela from anywhere in Spain

What almost nobody publishes in one place is how long the drive actually takes from each city. These are road distances to the centre of Santiago, measured on the real network and without avoiding tolls. The times are continuous driving: add your stops, and in July and August add the queue on the AP-9 around Pontevedra.

Distances and times measured on the OpenStreetMap road network, centre to centre, on the fastest route that stays inside Spain. They are approximate: a routing engine has no idea whether you will hit roadworks, traffic or fog on the Pedrafita pass.

From the east and the south almost everything funnels the same way. From Madrid it is the A-6 as far as Lugo and then down into Santiago, and from Valencia the same with the A-3 tacked on the front, which makes an overnight stop on the meseta the sensible way to split it. From Barcelona the route runs through Zaragoza, Burgos and Ponferrada to join that same A-6: close to twelve hours of continuous driving, which in practice is two days. From Seville it is the A-66, the Ruta de la Plata — the same corridor the Vía de la Plata pilgrim route follows — up to Salamanca and Zamora, then the A-52 through Ourense. From Bilbao there is no need to go via Madrid: the A-8 hugs the Cantabrian coast to Ribadeo and enters Galicia from the top. And Ferrol is a little over an hour away on the AP-9 — the same run people make in reverse to start the Camino Inglés from Ferrol to Santiago, five stages that fit inside a week.

Santiago is well connected by motorway to A Coruña, Vigo, Pontevedra and Lugo. The important warning is for once you reach the city: the old town operates as a Low Emission Zone (Zona de Bajas Emisiones) with very restricted access — of the roughly 69,000 private vehicles registered in the city, only 735 hold a permit to enter the centre, and that permit depends on specific grounds (residency, business, deliveries), not just your DGT emissions label. In practice, if you're driving, forget about parking next to the cathedral: the sensible move is to leave the car in a peripheral car park like Xoán XXIII, San Caetano or Belvís and continue on foot or by city bus.

By plane

Rosalía de Castro airport — code SCQ — sits 12 km from the centre, with direct flights to Madrid, Barcelona, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and other destinations. Everything on airlines and getting from there to the centre is in our Santiago airport (SCQ) guide.