Asturias & Cantabria

Overview

Asturias and Cantabria are the green middle of Spain’s north coast, two regions that share one cliff-and-cove shoreline, one national park in the Picos de Europa, and an Atlantic climate that keeps the grass growing through August. It rains here, in every month, and that is the point: this is dairy country with a surf coast, where limestone peaks of over 2,600m stand close behind the beaches.

Cantabria is the smaller of the two, with Santander as its capital. Asturias is bigger and more mountainous, with Oviedo as capital and Gijón as its largest city. Treating them as one trip makes sense: the A-8 motorway ties the coast together, the Picos straddle the border (plus a sliver of Castile-León), and the food culture of beans, blue cheese and cider runs across both.

The history runs deep in both directions. Asturias kept a Christian kingdom alive after 711, and the legendary victory at Covadonga around 722 became the founding myth of the Reconquista; the 9th-century pre-Romanesque churches around Oviedo, UNESCO-listed since 1985, are the buildings that survive from that isolated early state. Cantabria goes far deeper still: Altamira, near Santillana del Mar, holds Palaeolithic paintings whose oldest marks date back around 36,000 years.

Then there is the cider. Asturian sidra natural is poured from arm’s length above the head to wake it up, and the culture around it, the sidrerías, the pour, the shared glass, was inscribed by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage in December 2024. Add fabada, the anchovies of Santoña and cave-aged Cabrales, and eating becomes a reason to come on its own.

Plan around the weather rather than against it: bring a rain jacket, keep a museum or a sidrería in reserve, and treat a clear day in the Picos as the jackpot it is.

History & character

Cantabri and Astures

The coast belonged to the Cantabri and the Astures, the tribes that gave both regions their names and gave Rome more trouble than almost anyone else in Iberia. The Cantabrian Wars of 29 to 19 BCE under Augustus were the final campaign of the Roman conquest of the peninsula. Romanisation stayed shallow in the mountains, though Rome worked the region hard for metal; the gold workings at Las Médulas, just over the León border, show the scale of it.

The kingdom in the mountains

When the Muslim conquest swept the peninsula in 711 to 714, the high wet north became the refuge. Pelayo’s victory at Covadonga, traditionally dated 722 and heavily mythologised, marked the start of the Kingdom of Asturias, which lasted until the court moved to León in the early 10th century. The capital moved from Cangas de Onís to Pravia and then to Oviedo under Alfonso II, who reigned from 791 to 842.

Alfonso II built San Julián de los Prados (Santullano), the largest surviving pre-Romanesque church in Spain; his successor Ramiro I added Santa María del Naranco, built as a palace in 848, and San Miguel de Lillo on the hill above Oviedo. The style, geometric and carved and two centuries ahead of the Romanesque proper, exists nowhere else.

Oviedo Cathedral grew around the Cámara Santa, the treasury chamber the kingdom built for its relics, and the city has traded on that sacred cargo ever since.

The Castilian sea

Cantabria’s medieval story is tied to Castile, which needed a port. The four coastal towns of Castro Urdiales, Laredo, Santander and San Vicente de la Barquera, chartered between 1163 and 1210, formalised their alliance as the Hermandad de las Cuatro Villas in 1296 and provided most of Castile’s Atlantic fleet; in the 1248 conquest of Seville it was a Santander ship that broke the chains of the Triana bridge across the Guadalquivir.

Coal, steel and October 1934

Coal seams in the central Asturian valleys made the region one of Spain’s first industrial heartlands from the 19th century, and the miners became one of the country’s most organised working classes. Their October 1934 uprising was put down by troops under a then little-known general named Franco, a dress rehearsal for the Civil War that everyone recognised in hindsight. Mining then declined through the late 20th century and is gone; the leftist, unionised streak in Asturian politics is not.

Seaside Cantabria

Cantabria’s 19th century went the other way: aristocratic. The Spanish royal family and much of the nobility began summering at Comillas from the second half of the century, commissioning Catalan modernists including Antoni Gaudí, whose 19th-century villa El Capricho still stands there. Santander built its own Belle Époque beach quarter at El Sardinero; a great fire in 1941 destroyed most of the city’s medieval centre, which is why the capital feels newer than its history.

Today

Both regions are shrinking and ageing; Asturias records a total fertility rate of 1.03, the lowest in the European Union. The economy runs on dairy (Central Lechera Asturiana milk is sold all over Spain), tourism and what remains of heavy industry around Gijón and Avilés. Rural depopulation is the quiet crisis inland, and also part of why the valleys feel so empty and walkable.

See & do

Picos de Europa

The headline. Three limestone massifs split by deep gorges, topping out at Torre de Cerredo, 2,650m. The classic entry points:

• The Cares Gorge: the famous path runs about 11 km between Poncebos in Asturias and Caín on the Leonese side, carved into the cliff face between 1916 and 1921 to service a hydroelectric canal. Mostly level once you gain the height, dizzying in places, and busy in summer; start early.
• Lakes of Covadonga: the glacial lakes Enol (1,070m) and Ercina (1,108m) sit in high pasture above the Covadonga sanctuary, about 10 km uphill from the basilica. In summer you go up by shuttle bus, not by car (details under Getting around).
• Fuente Dé: on the Cantabrian side, the cable car climbs 750m from the valley floor to 1,823m in a few minutes, opening the high country to anyone. Trails fan out from the top station; Potes is the base town below.

Serious walkers aim for the foot of the Naranjo de Bulnes (Picu Urriellu), the 2,519m climbing tower first summited in 1904 and still the emblem of Asturian mountaineering.

Pre-Romanesque Oviedo

Four UNESCO churches sit in or within an easy drive of Oviedo: Santullano in the city, Santa María del Naranco and San Miguel de Lillo on Monte Naranco just outside, and Santa Cristina de Lena to the south. Naranco, a 9th-century royal palace turned church on a hillside with views over the city, is the one to see if you see only one.

The painted caves

Altamira is the most famous painted cave in Europe, and you cannot go in: visitor breath was damaging the paintings, the cave closed to the public in 2002 after mould appeared, and in 2010 the Ministry of Culture confirmed it would stay shut. The museum beside it holds a full-scale replica of the painted ceiling, which sounds like a consolation prize and is not; the bison are astonishing at any remove.

For geology rather than art, El Soplao in western Cantabria opened to visitors in 2005 and is famous for its helictites, formations that grow sideways and upwards in defiance of gravity; about 6 km of the cave system can be visited.

The coast

The shore alternates high cliffs with pocket beaches the whole way. The strangest is Playa de Gulpiyuri near Llanes, a small beach marooned inland in a sinkhole and fed by the tide through the rock. Llanes municipality alone packs in Torimbia, Cuevas del Mar and a string of other sandy coves along 30 km of coast. El Sardinero in Santander is the classic city beach with Belle Époque trimmings. Water is cold even in August; surfers wear wetsuits all year.

Cider country

Drinking sidra where it is made is a legitimate itinerary item. In Oviedo, Calle Gascona styles itself the Bulevar de la Sidra, with eleven sidrerías in a row pouring and serving Asturian classics. Villaviciosa, in the apple heartland east of Gijón, is home to the El Gaitero sparkling cider factory and the pre-Romanesque church of San Salvador de Valdediós in a valley nearby.

Modern set-pieces

Three buildings worth a detour: the Centro Botín in Santander, Renzo Piano’s 2017 art centre hanging over the bay; the Niemeyer Centre in Avilés, the only work in Spain by the Brazilian architect; and Gijón’s Universidad Laboral, the largest building in Spain, a Francoist mega-project now housing an art centre.

Towns & cities

Oviedo

Oviedo is the Asturian capital, a city of about 220,000 built around its cathedral, the Cámara Santa and a compact old town where the Fontán square has been a marketplace for centuries. It hosts the Princess of Asturias Awards each autumn and throws the week-long San Mateo festival in late September. The full story is in the city guide; the short version is that this is the polished, monumental half of the Oviedo-Gijón pair.

Gijón

Gijón is the biggest city in Asturias, around 271,000 people, and the more informal one: a working port with a Roman past (the Campo Valdés baths sit right under the old town) and the fishermen’s quarter of Cimavilla on a headland between the harbour and San Lorenzo beach. Chillida’s Elogio del Horizonte sculpture crowns the headland, and Semana Grande in August is the party of the Asturian summer. Many travellers prefer sleeping here to Oviedo: beach, sidrerías and sea air.

Santander

Santander is the Cantabrian capital, rebuilt after the 1941 fire and arranged around one of the finest bays on the coast, with El Sardinero’s beaches at one end and the Centro Botín on the waterfront in the middle. It is also where the UK ferries dock. See the city guide for the full treatment.

Avilés

Avilés is the third Asturian city, an industrial estuary town that kept its old core and added the Niemeyer Centre on the reclaimed riverfront in 2011. Less pretty than its neighbours, cheaper to sleep in, and close to the airport.

Cangas de Onís

Cangas de Onís was the first seat of the Asturian kingdom and is now the working base for the western Picos: the summer shuttle to the Lakes of Covadonga leaves from here. Expect gear shops, hearty menus and full hotels in August.

Llanes

Llanes is the east-Asturian beach town: a walled medieval port (the walls date to 1206) with three town beaches and dozens more within a short drive. The harbour breakwater is stacked with the Cubos de la Memoria, concrete blocks painted by the Basque artist Agustín Ibarrola into one of his last major works.

Ribadesella

Ribadesella sits at the mouth of the Sella river, with the Tito Bustillo painted cave on the edge of town and the Descenso Internacional del Sella, the mass kayak race down from Arriondas, taking over the first weekend of August.

Cudillero

Cudillero is the postcard fishing village of the west coast, under 5,000 people, its houses climbing the walls of a natural bowl above the port. Some older locals still speak Pixueto, the village’s own dialect of Asturian. Come for lunch, stay for the evening light after the coaches leave.

Comillas

Comillas is the Belle Époque set-piece of the Cantabrian coast: Gaudí’s villa El Capricho, the Sobrellano Palace, the neo-Gothic bulk of the old Pontifical University above the town, and a sandy beach below.

Santillana del Mar

Santillana del Mar is “the town of three lies”: neither holy, nor flat, nor by the sea. What it is: one of the best-preserved medieval townscapes in northern Spain, built around the Romanesque Colegiata of Santa Juliana, with the Altamira museum on its doorstep. Sleep here to see the stone streets empty in the morning.

San Vicente de la Barquera

San Vicente de la Barquera pairs a fishing port with the long arches of the Puente de la Maza across its estuary, the early-medieval Castle of the King above, and the dunes of the Oyambre natural park next door. On clear days the Picos rise straight behind the water, the best single view on this coast.

Potes

Potes is the stone-built capital of the Liébana valley, 1,300 people at the meeting of two rivers under the 15th-century Torre del Infantado, and the base for Fuente Dé and the eastern Picos. It distils orujo from valley grapes and celebrates it every November.

Castro Urdiales

Castro Urdiales, on the eastern edge of Cantabria near Bilbao, was Roman Flaviobriga; its Gothic church of Santa María de la Asunción and the Santa Ana castle with its lighthouse stand together on the harbour point. Anchovy and sardine canning is still a local industry. Works well as a stop between Bilbao and Santander.

Cartes

Cartes is a one-street surprise inland near Torrelavega: a protected historic ensemble of 15th to 18th-century houses and Gothic towers along the old Camino Real that carried Castilian trade to the port of Santander. Galdós set his novel Marianela here.

Santoña and Laredo

Santoña is the anchovy town, sitting on the edge of the tidal marshes that carry its name, and the place to buy the cured fillets at source. Laredo, its neighbour across the bay, was another of the four medieval villas (chartered in 1200) and is now one of Cantabria’s main summer beach resorts. Together they make an easy day from Santander.

Also worth knowing

Pravia, briefly the Asturian royal capital before Oviedo; Puente Viesgo, the village under the El Castillo caves; and Arriondas, where the Sella kayak race starts each August.

Food & drink

Both regions cook for cold and damp, and neither has ever taken the tourist-menu turn: this is Spain’s most reliably honest eating.

The bean stews

Fabada asturiana is the flagship: large white fabes beans stewed slowly with chorizo, morcilla and cured pork. Order it at lunch, not dinner, and plan nothing strenuous afterwards. Cantabria answers with cocido montañés, a 17th-century mountain stew of white beans, collard greens and the pork bits collectively called compangu, while the Liébana valley swaps beans for its own chickpeas in cocido lebaniego, served in stages: broth, then chickpeas, then meat.

The blue cheeses

The Picos are cheese caves with mountains attached. Cabrales, the famous one, is a raw-milk blue aged in natural caves whose humidity does the work; it is strong enough to be Spain’s benchmark for powerful cheese. Gamonéu, from villages near the Lakes of Covadonga, is lightly smoked and blended from cow, goat and sheep milk. On the Cantabrian side of the massif, Picón Bejes-Tresviso has held protected status since 1994 and must finish maturing at least two months in a limestone cave.

Sidra

Asturian sidra natural is dry, cloudy, just over 5% alcohol and carbonated only by its own fermentation, which is why it needs the escanciado: the pour from about a metre above the glass that aerates it on the way down. You are served a culín, a few fingers’ worth, and you drink it in one go while it is still lively. The Sidra de Asturias DOP dates from 2003, the orchards centre on Villaviciosa, Nava and Colunga, and in December 2024 UNESCO added Asturian cider culture to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Nava also keeps a Cider Museum for the full story.

Cantabria’s drink is orujo, the grape spirit of the Liébana valley distilled around Potes. Wine lists otherwise lean on Rioja from next door.

The sea

The star preserved product is the anchovy of Santoña, filleted by hand and cured to a depth no supermarket tin approaches. Fresh fish follows the fleet: hake, monkfish (pixín on Asturian menus), bonito in summer, spider crab and sea urchins (oricios) in season. Castro Urdiales still cans sardines and anchovies the old way.

Cachopo and the sweet finish

Cachopo is Asturias’ bar-food monument: two veal fillets around serrano ham and cheese, breaded and fried, usually big enough to share; the technique goes back to the 18th century and the doctor Gaspar Casal. For dessert, Asturias makes a famously creamy arroz con leche, along with frixuelos (thin crepes) and casadielles (fried walnut pastries), and Cantabria’s Pas valley ships sobaos pasiegos, dense butter sponges, and quesada across the country.

Nature

The Cordillera Cantábrica runs east-west behind the whole coast, wringing Atlantic weather out over some of the best-preserved wild country in Spain. Distances are compressed: alpine limestone, beech forest and tidal marsh can all fit in one day.

Picos de Europa

Spain’s first national park was declared here in 1918 as the Montaña de Covadonga, later expanded and renamed Picos de Europa. The three massifs, Cornión in the west, Urrieles in the centre and Ándara in the east, are separated by gorges up to 1.5 km deep, with Torre de Cerredo (2,650m) the summit of the range; brown bears and wolves survive in the remoter corners, and chamois are the animal you will actually see.

Bear country

The Cantabrian brown bear population is centred west of the Picos, in the quiet valleys of south-west Asturias. Somiedo Natural Park is the classic place to look, a landscape of brañas, the high summer pastures with their thatched stone teitos.

Asturias protects a chain of further mountain parks, Redes among them, and Cantabria runs its own set: the beech woods of Saja-Besaya, the karst of Collados del Asón, Peña Cabarga above the bay of Santander, the Oyambre coast, the Liencres dunes and the bird-rich Santoña marshes.

Karst and caves

Both regions sit on limestone riddled with cavities; Cantabria alone counts thousands of caves, from the UNESCO-listed painted ones to show caves like El Soplao with its gravity-defying helictites. El Soplao itself was found by miners and only recognised for what it was when cavers surveyed it in 1975, thirty years before it opened to visitors. Gorges, sinkholes and disappearing rivers shape most walks here; carry a map, because paths braid.

Coast and rivers

The coastal strip alternates cliff, ría and beach the whole way, with oddities like the inland tidal beach of Gulpiyuri where the sea arrives through the rock. Short, fast rivers drop from the mountains to the sea; the Sella is the celebrity, thanks to the August kayak race from Arriondas to Ribadesella. The Camino del Norte threads the entire coastline, UNESCO-listed since 2015.

Climate

This is oceanic Spain: mild, damp and even, closer in feel to Brittany than to the meseta an hour south. Santander averages around 10°C in January and 20°C in August, with rain spread across the whole year. Gijón and the Asturian coast behave the same way. Frost at sea level is rare; so are heatwaves, though a south wind off the plateau can spike temperatures for a few days in summer.

The local speciality is orbayu, the fine Asturian drizzle that can fall from a sky that looks barely cloudy. It ruins no plans if you dress for it and it is why everything is so green.

Uphill, everything intensifies. The Picos de Europa take 1,800 to 2,500mm of precipitation a year, with snow above 1,500m from December to April. Valley towns like Cangas de Onís and Potes sit between regimes: colder than the coast in winter, warmer in summer.

For swimmers, the Cantabrian Sea stays cold all year; even August water makes you gasp, which is why the beach culture here is about walking, surfing and long lunches as much as swimming. For walkers, the practical reading of the climate chart is simple: June and September give the best odds of dry trails, and no month guarantees them. High-mountain routes carry snow well into late spring, so save the ridgelines for high summer and give the coast the shoulder months.

When to go

The high season is short and local: July and August fill hotels from Llanes to San Vicente with Spanish families, and the Picos shuttle systems run at full stretch. Book those months well ahead. Either side of them, May, June, September and early October are the travellers’ window, greener and quieter, with the mountains at their most reliable in September.

Summer is also festival time. The Descenso Internacional del Sella turns the first weekend of August into the biggest party in Asturias, with the kayak race from Arriondas to Ribadesella backed by days of celebration. Gijón’s Semana Grande fills mid-August around the Feast of the Assumption, and Oviedo closes the season with the week of San Mateo in late September.

Winter is for the cities and the coast path on bright days: Oviedo, Gijón and Santander keep their museums and sidrerías running, hotel prices drop, and the mountains above 1,500m belong to snowshoers. Expect some rural restaurants to shut for holidays in deep winter; check before driving out to one.

If the Lakes of Covadonga are the goal, note the access calendar: the road is closed to private cars through the summer season and on many spring and autumn holiday dates, with the shuttle from Cangas de Onís as the way up. Come outside those windows and you can drive up yourself, often with the lakes near-empty.

Getting there

By air

Asturias Airport (OVD) sits on the coast at Castrillón, 15 km from Avilés, 40 from Gijón and 47 from Oviedo; Madrid and Barcelona are the busiest routes, with international links including London Gatwick and Paris. Santander’s Seve Ballesteros Airport (SDR), just across the bay from the city, grew on a Ryanair deal signed in 2003 and flies to London Stansted and a spread of European cities alongside Madrid. For eastern Cantabria, Bilbao’s bigger airport just over the Basque border is often the better-served option.

By train

The game-changer is recent: the Pajares Base Tunnel, nearly 25 km under the mountains and about twenty years in the building, opened on 30 November 2023 and put Asturias on the high-speed network at last. AVE and Alvia services now run Madrid to Oviedo and Gijón via León. Santander is reached by Alvia trains from Madrid via Palencia; there is no direct fast train from Barcelona to either region, so connect through Madrid.

By road

The A-8 motorway runs the length of the coast, linking Galicia to the Basque Country through both regions. From Madrid, the A-6 and then the AP-66 over the Pajares pass reach Oviedo, while the A-67 branches north at Palencia for Santander. Winter snow occasionally closes the high passes; the coastal approach never has that problem. ALSA coaches connect Madrid and the major northern cities to all the main towns, cheaper and slower than the train.

By sea

This is one of only two Spanish regions you can sail to from the British Isles: Brittany Ferries runs Plymouth to Santander and Portsmouth to Santander, plus Portsmouth and twice-weekly Rosslare sailings to Bilbao just east. The crossings suit anyone bringing a car, motorbike or camper; cabins sell out in summer.

Getting around

Trains, two gauges

Fast Renfe services and frequent Cercanías link the Asturian triangle of Oviedo, Gijón and Avilés, and Santander has its own commuter lines inland. The fun option is the metre-gauge network inherited from FEVE: slow trains along the whole north coast, threading Bilbao, Santander, Llanes, Ribadesella, Gijón and on towards Galicia, with the Transcantábrico luxury tourist train running the same corridor. Take it for scenery, not speed.

Buses and the Lakes shuttle

ALSA and regional operators cover the towns; the mountain valleys are thinner, so check return times before committing. For the Lakes of Covadonga, the summer system is straightforward: park at one of the numbered car parks in and around Cangas de Onís (€3 a day), buy the shuttle ticket (€9 adult day return, every 30 minutes), and ride up. The sanctuary itself stays reachable by car all year; only the lakes road closes.

Driving

A car is the right tool for the rural interior and the smaller coves. The A-8 makes east-west hops fast; everything perpendicular to it is slower than the map suggests, with mountain roads that narrow, twist and occasionally include cattle. Fill up before heading into the Picos valleys.

On foot and by bike

Two Caminos cross the regions: the coastal Camino del Norte, and the Camino Primitivo, which strikes inland from Oviedo over the mountains towards Galicia on the route tradition assigns to Alfonso II. For an easy family ride, the Senda del Oso follows a former mining railway for around 25 km through the Trubia valleys south-west of Oviedo.

City transport barely matters: Oviedo, Gijón and Santander centres are all walkable, with local buses for the stragglers and taxis cheap by northern European standards.

Practical info

For Spain-wide basics (currency, plugs, tipping, entry rules), see the Spain guide. What follows is specific to the green north.

Rain strategy

Bring a waterproof in any month; the orbayu drizzle ignores the calendar. Layers beat summer clothes even in August, when coastal evenings turn cool. For the Picos carry real mountain kit: the difference between valley floor and 1,800m can be twenty degrees plus wind, and cloud comes in fast.

Language

Asturian (asturianu, also called bable) survives with a speaker base estimated in the low hundreds of thousands; Spanish is the only official language, with Asturian legally protected and visible on signs. Nobody expects you to speak it, but place names switch (Cuadonga for Covadonga, Uviéu for Oviedo) and a gracies lands well. Cantabria speaks Spanish with its own accent rather than a separate language.

Cider etiquette

Let the escanciador pour; the metre-high pour is the mechanism that carbonates your glass, not a show for tourists. Drink the culín straight away and in one or two goes, hand the glass back, wait your turn. Spillage on the floor is part of the system. Ordering a whole bottle and pouring it yourself flat is the one reliable way to look lost.

Picos planning

Base yourself in Cangas de Onís or Arenas de Cabrales for the Asturian side, Potes for the Cantabrian side. Use the shuttle for the lakes in season (cars are turned back, not fined and waved on) and the funicular for Bulnes. Mobile coverage dies in the gorges, so download offline maps, and treat 112 as the mountain rescue number as everywhere in Spain.

The same tides make harbour swimming spots and estuary walks change character completely twice a day; locals plan around it without thinking, and you should copy them.

Eating hours

Lunch runs roughly 14:00 to 16:00, dinner from 21:00, though rural sidrerías fill earlier than restaurants in the south of Spain. Many kitchens close Sunday evening and Monday. Book ahead for weekend lunch anywhere with a fabada reputation.

Pilgrims

Walking the Camino del Norte or Primitivo, both UNESCO-listed since 2015, requires the usual credencial stamped along the way for the certificate in Santiago. These are the wettest Caminos; waterproof your pack, not just yourself, and expect the northern routes’ albergue network to be thinner than the Camino Francés one.