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Mar 13, 2024 · A wedge-shaped chunk of Spain’s north coast, fatter at the western end and thinner in the east, Asturias is one of the four “autonomous communities” ranged along the Cantabrian coast from Galicia...
Nov 2, 2020 · Asturias boasts a range of forests — oak, beech, chestnut, birch — and a mostly unspoiled coastline. Its beaches come in all sizes: a palette of turquoise blue waters surrounded by imposing...
Asturias, wedged against the Bay of Biscay in northwest Spain, is big country: a verdant wash of bold geography, distinctive flavors, bright sea and clouds wrapped around mountains. This ancient...
Apr 9, 2024 · The Principality of Asturias, as it’s officially known, brims with distinctiveness and diversity. It has its language, culture, and cuisine; its cool and damp climate harbors lush pastures,...
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- Cultural capital meets fun-loving port
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Beyond Barcelona, Asturias entices with gorgeous landscapes and world-class cuisine.
Sunrise warms the Picos de Europa, part of the Cordillera Cantabrica range that secludes Asturias from the rest of Spain.
This is a meal I could eat nowhere else, it occurs to me around the seventh course. I’m in the mountains of Asturias, one of Nat Geo’s Best Trips for 2020, and I’ve been served a dish of sea urchin and ham that unites the coast and peaks of this northern Spanish province in a single bite. Two tables away, I see José Antelo raise his fork in triumph.
Antelo works as an air traffic controller in Barcelona. His brother, Luis, is a superior court judge in Madrid. They live in two of Europe’s top restaurant cities; they can enjoy memorable meals night after night without ever boarding a plane. But three or four times a year, they meet to eat in Asturias.
Asturias? This autonomous region of Spain lying along the Bay of Biscay, dense with trees that run up hillsides, dotted by wild marshland, and scalloped with tidy beaches, isn’t located between Madrid and Barcelona. It’s hundreds of miles from either. When I mention that, José laughs. “I’m sure you know why we come,” he says. “Nowhere else in Spain can you find so many flavors, such incredible variety, in such a small area. It is like an entire country.”
We’re dining at Casa Marcial. Housed in an old mansion, or casona, decorated with window boxes and topped by a barrel-tiled roof, the restaurant sits at the top of a winding road in La Salgar, a mountain village that smells of pine. The coast is six miles to the north, as the Asturian wood pigeon flies. But La Salgar remains so deeply embedded in the hilly, heavily forested interior of the region that, I’m told, many of its residents spend their entire childhoods without ever seeing the water.
I was heading for the Asturian capital of Oviedo, a compact city of roughly 220,000 residents separated from the slightly larger Gijón by rapidly encroaching suburbs. Each city has a proprietary social scene; you can be a VIP in one and all but unknown in the other. Oviedo has the better museums; Gijón has the beach. Twice a year, the Sporting Gijón and Real Oviedo soccer teams bring the rivalry to life before a full stadium.
Most visitors come upon Oviedo first. They seek out some of the best pre-Romanesque architecture in the world, 14 preserved buildings, including the tall, narrow ninth-century palace-church complex of Santa María del Naranco. I make a pilgrimage there as soon as I arrive. I enter a vaulted room made of stones the color of milk-clouded coffee. Only one other person is here. The windows are cut thick into the walls of the building, their shutters flung open to the breeze. I peer over a grove of trees and see the city spread out below.
Within the hour I’m making my way through Oviedo and find sculptures, it seems, on almost every corner; more than a hundred adorn the capital. Before I reach my hotel, I pass “La Maternidad,” a rounded woman with an equally rounded child by Colombian sculptor Fernando Botero, then Miguel Ortiz Berrocal’s “El Diestro,” a metallic rendering of a bullfighter’s torso. Later, in a residential neighborhood, I’ll discover a conference center and office building designed by Santiago Calatrava that looks like a massive winged creature about to take flight. The next day, I’ll be transfixed by “El Regreso de Williams B. Arrensberg,” a statue of a trench-coated friend of artist Eduardo Úrculo, surrounded by suitcases and sporting a bemused expression as he gazes at the city’s cathedral.
Oviedo’s artistic awakening has happened only over the last generation, just as Nacho Manzano started drawing international attention to his small restaurant in the mountains. The timing is no coincidence. “Before then, we didn’t think Asturias had much to offer the world,” explains Esther Manzano, Nacho’s sister, who has her own restaurant, La Salgar, in the center of Gijón. “We didn’t believe in ourselves. We didn’t have fantastic weather. We were very hard to get to—a long drive from anywhere, there were no flights. We just assumed nobody would want to come.”
Then two things happened: Europe’s new bargain airlines began flying intrepid tourists here in the late 1990s; and Woody Allen’s 2008 film Vicky Cristina Barcelona sent its characters to Oviedo for a weekend, causing filmgoers around the world to turn to each other in surprise. Why would anyone leave Barcelona to visit … Asturias? “Woody Allen told the world we exist,” Esther says. “He opened the world’s eyes, but he also opened our eyes.” A statue of the controversial writer-director stands off Calle Uria.
Explore more: Here’s a quick guide to Málaga, Spain’s sixth largest city.
Like San Francisco and Scotland, bad weather suits Asturias. I leave Gijón and head east along the coast under a steady drizzle. In August, Ribadesella attracts Spaniards who are desperate for a respite from oppressive heat. In November, with rain misting a cool morning, it becomes a particularly lovely local fishing village. Kids splash through puddles in the streets. Adults walk dogs. Shop owners stand in the doorways greeting friends.
Left:
Fashioned with locally mined pink limestone, the Basilica de Santa María la Real de Covadonga rises near the Holy Cave and its Virgin of Covadonga.
Right:
Built in the 9th century as a royal palace, Santa Maria del Naranco, in Oviedo, became a church in later years. In 1985, UNESCO designated the pre-Romanesque-style building a World Heritage site.
Photography by Chiara Goia
Asturias, comunidad autónoma (autonomous community) and historic region of Spain that is coextensive with the northwestern Spanish provincia (province) of Asturias. It is bounded by the autonomous communities of Cantabria to the east, Castile-León to the south, and Galicia to the west.
People also ask
Is Asturias a big country?
What is Asturias like?
Is Asturias a land of contrasts?
What are the key features of Asturian geography?
The key features of Asturian geography are its rugged coastal cliffs and the mountainous interior. In the eastern range, the Picos de Europa National Park contains the highest and arguably most spectacular mountains, rising to 2,648 meters (8,688 ft).
