Travels through History – Northern Spain

This book is a travelogue about the cities of northern Spain.

I travelled to

1 Pamplona

2 Burgos

3. San Sebastian

4. Valladolid

5. Segovia

6 Leon

7 Gijon – I wanted to travel by train from Oviedo to the coastal cities of Gijon and Aviles. I knew there was a railway station in both cities and yet when I looked on the RENFE website there only seemed to be one train per day. This was most odd, so when I arrived at Oviedo bus station, I walked to the train station and checked the timetables. Sure enough, there were trains every 45 minutes between Oviedo and both Aviles and Gijon. I didn’t understand, but then I saw a ticket offering tickets on the local FEVE railway, a service run separately from the RENFE system. Problem solved. The next day, I caught the modern train to Gijon and the following day I went to Aviles.

Gijon is the largest city in Asturias, with over 275,000 inhabitants. A lot of the city was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War and there’s a famous story about a colonel in Franco’s forces who ordered his navy to shell the barracks where he was under attack from local miners armed with dynamite. The railway station is about a mile south of the headland called Cimadevilla which juts into the Bay of Biscay. This headland has a narrow neck between the harbour to the West and the Playa de San Lorenzo to the East and most of the interesting sights are in this area.

8 Oviedo – Asturias airport is close to the Bay of Biscay coast and if you are flying here from the UK try to obtain a window seat on the right-hand side of the plane. The planes fly down to the north coast of Spain and then turn left so passengers have a wondrous view of the cliffs, meadows, villages, hills, estuaries, landslides and harbours of first Galicia and then Asturias. A lot of passengers are heading to the nearby Picos de Europa national park for the walking and mountaineering opportunities. I was heading to the city of Oviedo, and the coastal cities of Aviles and Gijon, to see some sights ranging from 9th-Century churches to more modern architecture.    

Oviedo has a range of buildings and statues to mesmerise any visitor, from a Woody Allen statue via a massive statue of a bottom in a public street to a fantastically ugly complex of public buildings and private apartments by the never dull architect Santiago Calatrava. 

First though some information to show how important this smallish corner of northern Spain has been in the history of the country. Asturias made its bow on the pages of history when it was subdued by the Romans under Augustus (29–19 BC). Once the Romans had left, the local tribe, The Astures, prospered and could resist Suevi and Visigoth raids in the 5th Century AD. The Moorish invasion of Spain in the 8th Century came very close to Asturias, but the region was saved due to the heroics of King Pelayo and his troops who repelled the Moors at the Battle of Covadonga in 720AD.

9 Santiago de Compostela – Santiago de Compostela is the destination for more than 100,000 pilgrims per year who walk on the Way of St James or Camino de Santiago from most parts of Spain and other areas of mainland Europe. According to the pilgrimage museum in Santiago, there are 39 pilgrim routes in Spain and Portugal, as well as routes in France, Germany, Czechia, and Poland, which connect with the traditional start of the Camino in St Jean Pied de Port. The Camino is now becoming big business again. I had seen pilgrims in Pamplona, Burgos, and Leon already on my trip and would see them in Pontevedra a few days after leaving Santiago. How did this all start?

Santiago is the Spanish for St James, who was one of Jesus’s disciples and also his first cousin. It seems from the legend that St James never visited Galicia when he was alive though he might have visited Zaragosa where he had a vision of the Virgin Mary. The legend states that he returned to Jerusalem where he was beheaded by Herod Antipas – a verified fact – but then the legend continues with the claim two followers of St James organised a boat that took his dead body to the Atlantic coast of Spain, namely to a place called Padron, which is today famous for its peppers. Padron is roughly 12 miles from Santiago. 

The body was buried and then the storyline goes cold until 813 when a hermit, attracted to a hillside due to a vision of stars, found the tomb of St James. Compostela means ‘field of stars’. At the time the Moors had occupied most of Spain and so finding the bones of a disciple acted as a rallying point and St James became a champion for the few Christians in Asturias who were resisting the Moors. Alfonso II, King of Asturias, paid his respects and in 834 built a chapel for the bones to be housed in. St James began to be seen on the battlefields when the Christians were fighting the Moors and was credited with inspiring their victories.

Pontevedra,

A Coruna,

Vigo

on board the fast, modern trains of the Spanish railways.

I describe the history of these places along with the sights seen plus some food and drink options available to all.

There are extra stories about two pilgrimages of my own – to see the modern architecture of Santiago Calatrava in Valencia and to watch Lionel Messi play football in Barcelona.