Cantabria, Asturias and the Picos de Europa

Between the sea and the Picos

On the Cantabrian coast the Atlantic brings rain, and the landscape turns green: meadows, cows, forests of beech and chestnut. The road runs along cliffs and beaches, then climbs towards the Picos de Europa, some twenty kilometres from the sea. Their peaks reach nearly 2,650 metres. On the coast, in Comillas, the palaces were built by the indianos, emigrants who came home rich from the Americas. In 1883 one of them commissioned the young Gaudí to build a villa of brick and ceramic tiles decorated with sunflowers, El Capricho. It is one of the architect’s rare works outside Catalonia.

After San Vicente de la Barquera, the Desfiladero de La Hermida leads to Potes and the Liébana valley. There, the monastery of Santo Toribio keeps what is said to be the largest fragment of the True Cross. At the head of the valley, the Fuente Dé cable car climbs more than 750 metres of rock face, to a viewpoint at 1,823 metres. Further west, Bulnes gave its name to the Naranjo de Bulnes, the best-known peak in the Picos. The village can only be reached on foot or by funicular.

The Asturian coast, around Llanes, alternates between small beaches and cliffs. At the bufones de Pría, in heavy seas, water shoots up through holes in the cliff. At Ribadesella, the Tito Bustillo cave holds prehistoric paintings. Cudillero stacks its brightly painted houses around its harbour. The trip ends in Oviedo: its 9th-century royal palace, Santa María del Naranco, is a World Heritage Site.

Close by, Santillana del Mar is known as ‘the town of three lies’. Santillana is neither holy, nor flat, nor by the sea. It has kept its cobbled streets, its noble houses with carved coats of arms and its Romanesque collegiate church.

Covadonga and the lakes

According to tradition, it was at Covadonga that the Asturian leader Pelayo halted a Muslim army in the early 8th century. Christian Spain dates the start of the Reconquista from here. A chapel is tucked into the cave above a waterfall, facing a basilica of pink stone. Spain’s first national park was created around Covadonga in 1918. It became the Picos de Europa National Park, which spreads across three regions: Asturias, Cantabria and Castile and León.

Above the sanctuary, a narrow road climbs to the lakes of Enol and Ercina, at more than a thousand metres. At Easter, from June to mid-October and on long weekends until early December, it is closed to cars and motorhomes. You then go up by shuttle bus from Cangas de Onís, on dates that the park publishes each year.

What not to miss

1. 1Santillana del MarCobbled streets, houses bearing coats of arms and a Romanesque collegiate church.
2. 2The Altamira museumThe replica of the cave, as close as you can get to the painted bison.
3. 3El CaprichoThe villa of tiles and sunflowers that Gaudí designed for Comillas.
4. 4Fuente DéThe cable car and the viewpoint high above the Liébana valley.
5. 5The lakes of CovadongaTwo glacial lakes set in pasture, facing the peaks.
6. 6CudilleroA fishing port of brightly painted houses, tiered like an amphitheatre.

Cantabria and Asturias in pictures

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Santillana del Mar and its collegiate church.

The Asturian table

In Asturias, cider is poured from a height: arm raised above the head, glass held low, to froth up a mouthful you drink straight away. You learn the gesture in the sidrerías, the cider houses, where you eat fabada, a stew of white beans, chorizo and black pudding.

The Picos are cheese country too, home to cabrales, a blue cheese ripened in caves. From Cantabria, take home anchovies from Santoña and sobaos, small butter cakes from the Pas valley.