Lightning strike guts 300-year-old A Coruña monastery

The A Virxe de Barca monastery in Muxía, Galicia, was left in ruins on Christmas Day apparently after the spread of a fire caused by a lightning strike on a nearby electrical transformer. The emergency services received a call at 8.30am on Wednesday reporting that the sanctuary, an emblematic location for pilgrims on northern Spain’s Costa da Morte, had been engulfed by flames. Fire crews and volunteers battled the blaze, but to no avail. “There was no way to stop it,” said the mayor of Muxía, in A Coruña province, adding the sanctuary was “ruined.”