Dorf · Co. Galway
“The hospital” — the Gaeltacht village on the shore of Galway Bay, 18 km west of the city, with the beach, the harbour, the shore fishing and the name that comes from a medieval leper hospital.
Spiddal — also known as Spiddle, with the Irish and official name An Spidéal, meaning “the hospital” — is a village on the shore of Galway Bay in County Galway, Ireland. It is 18 kilometres west of Galway city, on the R336 road, and it is in a Gaeltacht, an Irish-speaking area, in the Connemara region. The village is a centre for tourism with a beach, a harbour and shore fishing — the bay in front, the road behind, and the walk from the village down to the water is the walk that gets done first.
According to the 2022 census, approximately 75% of the population are Irish-speaking and, of these, approximately 40% speak Irish on a daily basis outside the education system. That is the village's character: the largest share of daily Irish speakers of any settlement this close to a city, and the sign on the gate says so — An Spidéal is the name, and the conversation in the pub runs in both languages. The Gaeltacht status is the village's identity, and the tourism comes for it as much as for the beach.
The name of the village in Irish, An Spidéal, derives from the word ospidéal, which in turn derived from the Insular French, or Anglo-Normand, word ospitel. The name originates from a mediaeval leper hospital situated in An Spidéal Thiar, West Spiddal, and a number of other hospital facilities were based in the area — the old charity country on the bay shore, and the name that outlived the hospital by centuries.
Spiddal is on the R336 on the shore of Galway Bay, 18 km west of the city; the beach and the harbour are in the village, and the shore fishing is the bay's trade. The beach works in any settled weather, and the village is the quiet place on the bay between the city and the Connemara road.
Übernachten
Spiddal puts the beach, the harbour and the Gaeltacht all within a walk — the bay is the point.
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