Village
Allande, with its capital at Pola de Allande, is a concejo of western Asturias, with barely 1,500 inhabitants and one of the lowest population densities in the region. It borders Galicia along one stretch, and the Palo sierra divides it into two linguistic halves: to the west eonaviego is spoken, and to the east, Asturian. Since 1994 a good part of its territory has been protected as the landscape of the Sierra de Carondio y Valledor, with natural monuments such as the centuries-old yews of Santa Coloma, Lago and Bustantigo, and the cork oak grove of Boxo. The abandonment of cereal farming and vineyards steered its economy toward livestock farming. The Camino Primitivo crosses it via the Palo pass, and notable are the Cienfuegos palace, from the 14th century, and the murals of the church of Celón.
Monument
The church of Santa María de Celón, in the municipality of Allande, is a Romanesque church from the early 13th century, with a single rectangular nave and a vaulted apse. It holds in its chancel important 16th-century wall paintings of the Passion of Christ and the Coronation of the Virgin, the work of an anonymous master known as the master of Celón. Both the church and its surroundings are protected as a Bien de Interés Cultural de Asturias (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
Monument
Known as El Palaciu, it crowns a hill above Pola de Allande and has been a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 1994. Built in the 14th century and rebuilt around 1520 by Rodrigo González de Cienfuegos, lord of Allande, it was heavily remodelled in the 18th century by Baltasar González de Cienfuegos, count of Marcel de Peñalba. It has three towers and an L-shaped floor plan; the two oldest are square, and the third, rectangular, was enlarged for the noble quarters. Its unadorned, defensive exterior is only softened in the rear courtyard, with Renaissance elements and a 19th-century wooden gallery restored in 2008. It appears on Hispania Nostra's Lista Roja de Patrimonio en Peligro (Red List of Endangered Heritage).
Monument
The church of Saint Andrew stands in the parish of Pola de Allande, capital of the Asturian concejo of Allande. It is a Gothic work from the early 16th century, dedicated to the apostle Saint Andrew, with fine architectural lines despite later additions, and covered with a ribbed vault. It preserves a high altarpiece from the mid-16th century, in Mannerist style, whose craftsmanship points to the Palencia school of Alonso Berruguete, an unusual piece in the churches of western Asturias.
Nature
The Lago yew is a thousand-year-old specimen of the species Taxus baccata that grows beside the parish church of the hamlet of Lago, in the concejo of Allande, where the tree was once venerated by local communities and the Catholic Church took advantage of that devotion to build its churches beside it. It measures 16 metres in height, 9 in canopy spread and just under 6 in trunk girth. It was declared a natural monument on 27 April 1995, is protected by the Asturian Plan de Ordenación de los Recursos Naturales (Regional Land-Use Plan) and lies within the protected landscape of the Sierras de Carondio y Valledor.
Nature
A protected landscape in Asturias covering 25,417 hectares spread across Allande, Villayón and Grandas de Salime, between the Navia and Esva river basins, from inland Asturias to the coast at Luarca; it is a sparsely populated area, with its population concentrated in hamlets and villages. It was established in 1994 under the Plan de Ordenación de los Recursos Naturales de Asturias, although this protection status has never been developed with its own management instrument. Its vegetation is mostly farmland and pasture, and the cork oak grove of Boxu stands out. Its fauna includes wolves, foxes, roe deer, wild boar, otters, the Montagu's harrier and the common buzzard, and an Atlantic rarity, the ocellated lizard, a Mediterranean species; in 2024 the presence of the brown bear was also detected.
Nature
At 1,416 metres it is the roof of the municipality, in the Panchón hills and not far from the municipal capital. It forms part of the transverse ranges which, east of the Leirosa-Valcárcel axis, mark out short valleys and narrow ravines.
Nature
A pre-Roman fortified settlement at Beduledo, declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) with the category of archaeological zone by the decree of 14 May 2014. From it comes the roughly carved warrior's head now kept in the museum of the Coaña hillfort.
Activity
The stage leaving Pola de Allande for Berducedo climbs some 550 metres in its first eight kilometres to reach the top of the pass, at around 1,100 metres. It is considered the queen stage of the Camino Primitivo and also one of the most beautiful.
Monument
A fortified house raised in the 15th century over an earlier fort on the edge of Pola de Allande; it passed to the Cienfuegos family in 1515 and around 1520 Rodrigo González de Cienfuegos rebuilt it, with a further 18th-century remodelling by the count of Peñalba.
Nature
A thousand-year-old yew standing beside the parish church of Santa Coloma, in the concejo of Allande, built in 1785 on top of another from the 14th century; the tree is believed to have been an object of veneration in ancient times, which is thought to have led the Church to build the church beside it. At 14.5 metres tall, 12 metres across and 6 metres in girth, it is considered the oldest yew in Asturias. It shares natural monument status, declared on 27 April 1995, with two other centuries-old yews in the concejo, those of Lago and Bustantigo, and with the cork oak grove of Boxo; all of it within the protected landscape of the Sierra de Carondio y Valledor.
Nature
A stand of cork oaks of 12.19 hectares on the southern slope of the Sierra de Muriellos, the largest and best preserved in Asturias; it was declared a natural monument by Decree 39/2002 of 4 April, within the Carondio and Valledor Protected Landscape.
Activity
A stretch of the Camino Primitivo that climbs from Pola de Allande up to the Palo pass along old bridle paths; it is one of the hardest and most panoramic stages of the pilgrim route that Alfonso II opened towards Compostela.
Monument
The chapel of the tiny Montefurado, in the middle of the Camino Primitivo, is all that remains of a pilgrims' hospital active until the middle of the 19th century, whose hospitallers would go out to guide travellers when the snow erased the mountain path.
Nature
Two enormous open cuts made by the Romans to tear gold from south-western Asturias: it is reckoned that more than eight million cubic metres of earth and stone were shifted from them, and the collapsed landscape they left still marks these slopes.