Vegan on the Camino Litoral/Coastal
My wife and I completed the Camino Litoral/Coastal route via Porto last month. (We made this Insta post too in case it's helpful.)
Portugal was generally pretty good with vegan options. Even if you were in a small town there were usually vegan options, even if it was just at the grocery store. Aldi was the best, but most if not all of the grocery stores in Portugal have good options. In Spain things were a little trickier as there weren't as many desirable grocery store options until you got to Vigo or Pontevedra. But it was still managable. Especially if you stick to making sandwiches or similar for lunch.
For breakfast we had either oatmeal (there is a good vegan protein oatmeal at Decathlon we brought) or Alpro yogurt with fruit. Typically we made sandwiches with vegan deli meat (make sure vegan - they do sell vegetarian deli meat which has eggs) or tofu, vegan cheese or hummus, tomato and herbs to tide us over for lunch while walking. For dinner then we had protein packed pastas with canned peas, rice and beans, or other easy meals for dinner. We brought some TVP with us that was super light and easy to throw in. We also found a two cafes on the Portogeuse litoral/coastal routes that had vegan pastries (in Vigo and Pontevedra) or but some cafes had at milk for their coffees at the very least.
Google maps or Happy Cow didn't always turn up all of the vegan options in each town easily even if there were some. Typically searching "Vegan" or the regional language equivilant works pretty well most places but especially in Spain it didn't always show that there were vegan cafes or options at restaurants. It helped to search for "Oat Milk (or avena)", "Tofu", etc. after exhuating the "Vegan" Google maps search as we even found a 100% vegan bakery (pumper) this way in Pontevedra. Meanwhile pumper did not appear on our Google Maps search when just searching for "Vegan" for some reason.
A few other things to note is that the most prevelant vegan option we saw on the camino were vegan burgers at restaurants or burger joints. So if your into that there are plenty of them along most of the Spanish route going north. Most if not all of these are on Brioche buns though, which are not usually vegan (Milk and Eggs), so maybe request different bread or get it on lettuce instead. Additionally most if not all grocery stores, restaurants, etc. are closed on Sundays in Spain. So you need to stock up on at least 3 meals worth of food on Saturday afternoons/evenings and be able to carry it with you to your next stop. Many of
Overall I recommend stocking up on lots of snacks, bars, etc. to keep things interesting and stay nourished when options are sparse. We had 25L backpacks and with 1 change of clothes (for evenings), toiletries, and rain coats, with sandals on the outside of our bags. With the remaining space being snacks, and dry food for dinner we restocked each night. While wearing shorts and a sunshirt during the day with our trail runners. We brought with us to start the journey our Decathlon oatmeal, 2 packs of Decathlon vegan protein bars, 1 pack of TVP, and 2 shelf stable baked tofu packs.
Happy to answer any questions from fellow vegans or vegetarians wanting to do the Camino Portugues!