At a time when no other coastal town in the area had electric lighting, the brilliance of the light of the Vilan lighthouse had an extraordinary effect on the people of the region. Its powerful beam caught the attention of the writer Enrique Labarta Pose, from Baio, who wrote about it in one of his stories at the beginning of the 20th century.
Because of the dangers on that section of the coast, where low but steep cliffs abound and many shipwrecks have occurred, Cape Vilan was one of the places where the first three lighthouses on Costa da Morte were built, together with the Sisargas islands and Fisterra.
The old lighthouse was built in 1854, a badly designed construction due to its unsuitable location and the limited light output. For this reason, some years later, it was necessary to build a new, taller lighthouse with a more powerful light on high ground further north, the new Vilán lighthouse. The project engineers were Francisco Lizárraga and Adolfo Pequeño, and it came into operation in 1896.
The octagonal tower finished in slabs of pink granite from the Pena Maior quarry, together with the light, rises 24 m above the ground and 104 m above sea level. Owing to a lack of space around the tower, the living quarters for the lighthouse keepers and the machine room had to be built on an esplanade further down.
The new Vilán was the first lighthouse in Spain to use electricity, which was produced by two steam engines. After electricity from the grid arrived there in 1924, the machine house was demolished, leaving the esplanade in front of the living quarters that still remains today.
With the passage of time, new services were added to the lighthouse, such as the radio beacon (1922), which transmitted a signal in Morse code matching the light signal, and the installation of a foghorn and a new optic and light (1962). With some of the machines or mechanisms that were removed during the renovations, a small museum open to the public was created on the ground floor. Part of the tower of the original Vilán lighthouse still stands on the hill to the south of the esplanade. From here there is a magnificent view of the new lighthouse and the entire coast.
On returning to Cape Vilán, it is strongly recommended to take the dirt track to the English Cemetery, which offers superb views of the cape and lighthouse, one of the most beautiful sections of the Galician coast. The cemetery was built to bury the bodies which the sea dragged to the coast from the wreck of the English ship The Serpent, which was battered against the cliffs of the Boi Point on 10 November 1890, in which 173 crew members of the 176 on board lost their lives.
