Village
Laviana is a mining concejo of about 12,350 inhabitants in the Principality of Asturias, with its capital at Pola de Laviana, located in the coal basin of the río Nalón, which crosses it from east to west forming its main vega between mountains reaching 1,564 metres at Peña Mea. It forms part of the Protected Landscape of the Mining Basins of Asturias and borders the Redes natural park. It preserves prehistoric remains from the Bronze Age, such as the megalithic burial mounds of Callacente and La Baúga, and several Iron Age castros not precisely dated. It is the birthplace of the novelist Armando Palacio Valdés, whose birth house is preserved in Entrialgo, and in August it celebrates the Descenso Folclórico del Nalón, declared of national touristic interest.
Monument
A late medieval tower on a limestone spur, well defended by natural barriers; some sources once attributed it to an early medieval origin, perhaps from the reign of Ordoño I, although no remains earlier than the 14th century survive. It also controlled economic activity in the Nalón valley and watched over the route to the plateau through the Tama pass, hence its continued habitation and its many alterations. It has three floors with few arrow slits: the first served as a dungeon, and access is through the original door, with a round arch, at the level of the first floor. Declared a Historic-Artistic Monument, it suffered the collapse of two walls in the 19th century and a restoration with cement and reinforced concrete in the 1950s and 1960s that altered its internal layout.
Monument
Rural manor house from the 18th century in the parish of Entralgo, municipality of Laviana, where the realist novelist Armando Palacio Valdés was born and grew up, on 4 October 1853. Its symmetrical façade, with a projecting central section and wooden galleries on the sides, has housed since 23 April 2003 the house-museum and Interpretation Centre dedicated to the writer. The ground floor holds the reception and the research rooms and workshops, while the upper floor houses the museum itself, spread over five spaces with a permanent exhibition on his life and work.
Monument
The only Romanesque vestige in the municipality of Laviana, perhaps linked to the palace of the house of Quirós, today declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) and connected to the old Camino de Santiago of Tarna. Of the 12th-century church only the portal survives, with a lowered semicircular arch and two archivolts on columns with vegetal capitals decorated with checkerwork and zigzag patterns, since the rest was rebuilt in the 16th and 17th centuries, leaving the Romanesque work greatly altered; of the original roof only a stretch of star vault and two ashlar transverse arches are preserved, the rest having been lost in a fire in 1936. Inside it holds a Baroque altarpiece from the first two decades of the 17th century, with an Ecce Homo relief linked to the work of Antonio Borja.
Nature
A 1,097-metre summit that owes its name to marking the meeting point of the districts of Laviana, Mieres and San Martín del Rey Aurelio, sometimes mistakenly cited as pico Tres Conejos. It closes off the La Faya slope to the south and lies within the protected landscape of las Cuencas Mineras. Along the ascent route there are monuments dedicated to the miner and to those who fell in the Spanish Civil War.
Nature
At 1,291 metres it is one of the main heights in the municipality, in the eastern, limestone half where the greatest altitudes are concentrated. From its ridge you look down on the narrow floodplain where the Nalón reaches its widest, at Pola de Laviana.
Curiosity
Novel published in 1903 by Armando Palacio Valdés, also known as La aldea perdida, a novel-poem of peasant customs, set in his native Entralgo, in the municipality of Laviana. It tells how the arrival of the Industrial Revolution and of the miners shatters the village's bucolic and traditional way of life, which the author compares to the Arcadia of the pre-industrial rural world through parallels with Greco-Roman mythology; it is considered one of the most explicit anti-industrialist indictments in Spanish literature. It is one of Palacio Valdés's most personal works, in which he portrays himself as a child witness to the events, giving the book a certain autobiographical character and its nostalgic tone.
Activity
A watery, humorous parade in which the peñas go down the river in boats of their own making, from the puente de Arco to the prau de la Chalana, on the Saturday falling between 19 and 25 August. It has been a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Nacional (the highest tourism distinction awarded by the Spanish State to a festival) since June 2020. The parade sets off at around three in the afternoon in the centre of Pola de Laviana, and the descent begins two hours later under the arches of the Roman bridge of Puente de Arco, crossing still pools and stony stretches as far as the bridge of La Chalana, where participants sing the traditional song of the Chalaneru. In 2025 it celebrated its 56th edition, the best attended in its history, and in 2018 it was voted Spain's best festival in the Mi fiesta es la mejor contest.
Monument
A church on a Latin cross plan with a round-arched entrance which holds an 18th-century altarpiece; its Marian dedication is one of the most venerated among the upper parishes of Laviana.
Nature
A limestone pyramid of 1,564 metres that separates Laviana from the municipality of Aller and can be seen from half the coalfield; its ascent is one of the classics of Asturian mountaineering for the exposure of its final ridge.
Activity
The Folk Descent of the Nalón is a humorous river procession that runs along the río Nalón as it passes through the concejo of Laviana. It began in 1968 as a simple boat trip devised by the Eros cultural association of Pola de Laviana; it was declared a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Regional (official Spanish tourism-interest distinction, at regional level) in 1991 and a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Nacional (official Spanish tourism-interest distinction, at national level) in June 2020. It is held on the Saturday between 19 and 25 August: the procession sets off around three in the afternoon from Pola de Laviana towards the Puente de Arco, where around five the descent begins with handmade satirical boats that pass under the Roman bridge and, a kilometre and a half further down, under the bridge of La Chalana, where the participants sing the song of the Chalaneru before reaching the Prau de la Chalana.
Nature
In the limestone mass of Peña Mea, of 1,564 metres, opens the hollow known as the Ojo de Buey, a natural window bored through the rock which has become the most recognisable silhouette in the skyline of Laviana.
Food and drink
An emblematic stew of the cuisine of Laviana: meat of kid raised in the high pastures that surround the valley, slowly braised with new potatoes until the broth thickens and the potato dissolves into the sauce.