Potes

Overview

Potes is a small stone town in the Liébana valley of inland Cantabria, built where the rivers Deva and Quiviesa meet and four valleys converge, and it is the standard base for the eastern side of the Picos de Europa. Just over 1,300 people live here, spread over 7.64 km² at 291 metres above sea level, which means you can walk from one end of the built-up area to the other in twenty minutes.

What you get for that short walk is a dense old quarter of blazoned houses, towers and river bridges under the square bulk of the Torre del Infantado, plus the administrative habits of a place that has been capital of the comarca of Liébana since the Mendoza family took control of it in the 15th century. The town was declared a Conjunto Histórico Artístico in 1983 and won the national Pueblo Más Bonito de España vote in 2019, which is roughly when the coach traffic stopped being seasonal and started being constant.

Underneath the day-trip trade there is a functioning market town. The local kitchen runs on cocido lebaniego, the valley’s chickpea stew, alongside beef, lamb and kid, local cheeses, honey, a homemade dessert called canónigo, and a té del puerto laced with orujo, the grape spirit distilled in these valleys.

The setting does most of the work. Potes sits low and sheltered while the limestone of the Picos rises to the west, and the sunny slopes of Monte Arabedes immediately north of town supplied its firewood for centuries and once carried vineyards that have now almost entirely gone. Come for a day and you will see the old town. Stay two or three nights and you get the cable car at Fuente Dé, the monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana and a set of walks that start at the edge of the houses, which is the real argument for sleeping here rather than in Santander.

History

The first document to name the place, dated 847, calls it Pautes. The town’s own account traces the name to a pre-Roman word for water rather than to Latin pons, and points at the obvious cause: the confluence of the Deva and the Quiviesa and the abundant water that made a settlement worth building here.

A church of San Vicente is documented here in 947, attached to the monastery of Santo Toribio, and by the 10th century Potes was already acting as the administrative centre for Liébana. Royal privileges followed in 1299 and 1305. In the Becerro de Behetrías of 1351 the town appears as the property of don Tello, lord of Liébana and son of Alfonso XI.

The late Middle Ages here were a straight fight between the Manrique and Mendoza lineages for the valley. Juan II settled it around 1444 in favour of the Marqués de Santillana, and the Mendoza then made Potes the capital of Liébana. The town received its first ordinances in 1468.

That victory is why the Torre del Infantado stands where it does. The tower had belonged to don Tello and passed to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, second Marqués de Santillana, who was made first Duke of the Infantado by the Catholic Monarchs in 1475. It kept working long after the feuding stopped: a defensive redoubt for Liébana’s guerrillas through the sixteen separate French entries into the town during the Peninsular War, then a prison, then the town hall.

Potes stayed a seigneurial holding under the Duke of the Infantado through the early modern period, and the coats of arms cut into house fronts all over the old quarter are the paperwork of that arrangement. Municipal self-government arrived only in 1822.

The reconstructed centre was given Conjunto Histórico protection in 1983. One building shows the whole twentieth-century arc on its own. The old church of San Vicente Mártir, built and extended between the 14th and 18th centuries, belonged to the diocese of León until 1956, when it was handed to the town council, which promptly sold it at public auction to help pay for the new parish church.

Visiting

Start at the Torre del Infantado, because it is the only place that gives you the layout. Six floors are arranged around a central patio, and the permanent exhibition inside, El cosmos de Beato de Liébana, covers the 8th-century Liébana abbot and his commentary on the Apocalypse, with a reconstructed scriptorium showing how the illuminated Beatus manuscripts were made. The visit ends on the battlements, looking down on the town, the Deva and the Quiviesa, Monte la Viorna, the site of the monastery of Santo Toribio and the Picos behind it. Entry is €4 adult and €2 reduced, open 09:30 to 19:00 from 1 July to 30 September and during Semana Santa, and 09:30 to 17:00 from 1 October to 30 June, with the last visit 30 minutes before closing.

Walking the town itself costs nothing, and the council’s Ruta de los Escudos is the way to do it. It strings together more than twenty blazoned houses and towers, among them the Torre de Osorio, the Torre de Calseco, the Casona de Otero y Cossío, the Casa de la Canal, the Casona del Capitán, the birthplace of the violinist Jesús de Monasterio, the old Jesuit convent and the Convento de San Raimundo.

The old church of San Vicente Mártir now holds the Centro de Estudios Lebaniegos, which runs temporary exhibitions, concerts and talks, and the region’s only Oficina de Atención al Peregrino for walkers heading to Santo Toribio. The municipal tourist office is in its portico, at Plaza de La Serna, and the building opens 09:30 to 17:30 in July, August and September, and 09:00 to 17:00 the rest of the year. Down by the bridge, the Ermita de San Cayetano is worth a look from outside for its carved doors, which take up nearly the whole facade of a very small building. It holds an 18th-century baroque altarpiece, but it is privately owned, so do not plan around getting in.

The reason most people sleep in Potes is up the valley at Fuente Dé. The cable car climbs 753 metres of vertical in 3 minutes 40 seconds, on 1,450 metres of cable at 10 metres per second, putting you at 1,823 metres inside the Picos de Europa national park with 20 passengers to a cabin. There is a café at each end and a south-facing viewing balcony beside the upper one. A return ticket is €30 for adults and €15 for children in high season, which runs 1 July to 30 September plus Semana Santa and every national holiday and long weekend, and €20 and €8 the rest of the year. Single ascents are €17 and €13 respectively, which is what walkers descending to Espinama or Áliva pay.

The other fixed stop is the monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana, in the neighbouring municipality of Camaleño, which holds the Lignum Crucis, the largest surviving fragment of the Cross, and works by Beato de Liébana. It opens daily 10:00 to 19:00, entry is free and no booking is needed, and there is a pilgrim mass at 12:00 every day of the year. Its Puerta del Perdón opens only for an Año Jubilar Lebaniego, which falls in any year when the feast of Santo Toribio on 16 April lands on a Sunday.

For the national park itself, the Sotama visitor centre has a free interpretation exhibition on the landscapes and ecosystems of the Picos, open 09:00 to 20:00 from 1 April to 31 October and 09:00 to 15:30 in winter, last entry 30 minutes before closing.

Two marked walks leave from the town itself. Monte Arabedes is the easier one: 7.6 km, 568 metres of ascent, about 2 hours 30 minutes at medium difficulty, starting near the public school on the old Rases track, passing the Ermita de La Magdalena and the hamlet of Rases before a wooden viewpoint over the whole town. Monte la Viorna is the serious one: 8.2 km, 870 metres of ascent, 4 hours 10 minutes, graded high, starting in town beside the 17th-century Ermita de la Virgen del Camino and finishing on a 1,095-metre summit facing the eastern massif of the Picos.

Tips

• Book the Fuente Dé cable car online at least 24 hours ahead and pick your half-hour slot deliberately. Tickets are only valid in that band, and on a July morning the queue for walk-up tickets is the whole difference between a good day and a wasted one.

• Going in low season halves the cable car bill: €20 return instead of €30 for an adult, €8 instead of €15 for a child. High season means 1 July to 30 September, Semana Santa and every national holiday and puente, so mid-October and May are the value windows.

• Carry a mountain federation card if you have one. It gets you the group rate at Fuente Dé, €23 return in high season against €30, on production of a valid card.

• The Torre del Infantado closes at 17:00 from October to June, with last entry at 16:30, so an afternoon arrival out of season can lose you the one paid sight in town.

• Santo Toribio is free and takes no bookings, so the only crowd control is timing. The pilgrim mass at 12:00 runs every day of the year; come before or well after it if you want the church quiet.

• Time your visit around a date if you want the town at full volume, and book beds well ahead for it. The Fiestas de la Santísima Cruz run four days around 14 September, the All Saints cattle fair falls on 2 November, and the Fiesta del Orujo takes the second full weekend of November.

• Monday is market day and the streets are busiest then, which is the opposite of most Spanish towns. If you want the old quarter to yourself, walk it early on any other weekday.

• Eat cocido lebaniego at lunch rather than dinner. It is the valley’s chickpea stew and it is a midday dish here, served alongside local cheeses, beef, lamb and kid.

• No railway reaches Potes. The nearest Renfe station is Cabezón de la Sal, with ALSA buses onward, and the bus stop in town is a short walk from everything.

• The tourist office sits in the portico of the old church of San Vicente Mártir on Plaza de La Serna, on +34 942 730 787. Ask there for the printed walking-route leaflet, which covers the marked trails leaving from town.

• Dogs travel on the cable car for €10 return, but only inside a closed carrier that you bring yourself and that stays shut for the whole ride.