Village
Tineo, in Asturian Tinéu, is the second-largest concejo in Asturias after Cangas del Narcea, with 540.83 km² spread across 44 parishes and 340 settlements, most with fewer than 80 inhabitants; the town of Tineo, at 652 metres altitude and with 3,480 inhabitants, is its administrative capital. The place name, already documented as Tinegio in a charter of Alfonso III from the year 899, probably comes from the Roman personal name Tinaius. With 8,679 inhabitants in total, the concejo is one of the largest milk producers in Asturias. The Camino Primitivo passes through its territory, running alongside the monastery of Obona, and at the end of July the Vaqueirada is celebrated, with its traditional vaqueiro wedding.
Monument
A Benedictine church located in Obona, in the municipality of Tineo, begun in the 13th century in Romanesque style following Cistercian norms, and declared a Monumento Nacional (a former national heritage-protection designation, predecessor of today's Bien de Interés Cultural) on 14 May 1982. Tradition attributes its founding to Prince Adelgaster, natural son of King Silo, on 17 January 780, although a monastic community dependent on the monastery of Corias already existed in the 11th century. The monastery became a major economic and cultural centre: its monks perfected agricultural and livestock-raising techniques and taught classes in Latin, philosophy and theology. The church, with three naves and three circular apses, holds a Romanesque crucified Christ from the 12th century and the oldest documentary reference to Asturian cider. It was also a stop for pilgrims on the inland Camino de Santiago.
Monument
The monastery of San Miguel de Bárcena stands in Bárcena del Monasterio, in the municipality of Tineo. Its founding dates back to the 10th century, when count Vela Núñez and his wife, countess Totilde, rebuilt an earlier building; from that first pre-Romanesque structure a window with a central column survives. The present building, from the 13th century, has a single nave and semicircular apse, with two Romanesque entrance portals and a triumphal arch resting on four columns crowned with notable capitals; in the 16th century a chapel was added on the north side, with wall paintings in its head. On 1 May 1010, Alfonso V of León exempted its inhabitants from all royal tribute, and the monastery came under the jurisdiction of that of San Juan Bautista de Corias.
Monument
The former conventual church of San Francisco built at the end of the 13th century in the municipal capital. From that period it preserves tombs, the entrance doorway, the chancel arch and the remains of a Romanesque tower; part of the complex houses the Sacred Art museum.
Monument
Armorial mansion founded in 1525 in the built-up area of the town of Tineo, with a central block flanked by two towers on the main façade and an interior courtyard of notable workmanship; it is, along with the palace of the García de Tineo and its cylindrical tower, the greatest example of urban seigneurial architecture in a town that grew up beside the Primitive Way.
Monument
An 18th-century manor house in the village of Tuña, declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico (Spain's heritage designation in force between 1931 and 1985), where Rafael del Riego was born. The same village preserves the Cabo el Río palace, that of Ferrería and the Casa de la Torre, all of them from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Nature
Oak (Quercus robur) located next to the church of San Pedro in the village of Valentín, municipality of Tineo; its latest dating places its birth around the year 1160, which makes it, according to tradition, the longest-lived tree in Asturias, with documents already mentioning it before the discovery of America. It reaches 16 metres in height, 20 in crown spread and 10 in trunk circumference. It was declared a natural monument on 27 April 1995, a distinction it shares with the now-vanished Fayona de Eiros, another singular tree of the municipality, and it appears among the hundred most singular trees in Spain in the catalogue Árboles, Leyendas Vivas. In 2008 it received the title of Árbol Gigante.
Nature
The Esva is a coastal river in north-western Asturias that rises at the confluence of the rivers Bárcena and Grande de Calleras, near the hamlet of Ese de Calleras, in the north of the municipality of Tineo, where it is also known as the río Ese because of the large meander it forms near its source. It receives the waters of the Navelgas on its left bank before entering the municipality of Valdés, where it flows through Paredes, Trevías and Canero and reaches the sea at the playa de Cueva. Along its course lie the Hoces del Esva, a site under special European protection. Its banks, with no dams of any size, are home to probably the largest otter population of any Asturian watercourse, as well as trout, salmon, eel, sea bass, corcón and flounder.
Nature
The river enters the municipality at Argancinas and leaves at Calabazos, taking in the waters of the Arganza, the Gera, the Rodical, the Farandón and the Tuña. Its flow drives two hydroelectric stations in the district, those of La Barca and La Florida.
Monument
The Museo del Oro de Asturias occupies the Casona Capalleja, in Navelgas, a town in the municipality of Tineo where gold has been extracted since Roman times. The visit opens with an explanation of the mineral, its properties and its extraction areas around the world, continues with the uses different civilisations have given it as wealth, symbol and ornament across a chronology running from the Neolithic to the present day, and reviews the great gold rushes, such as that of California. The final part is devoted to the gold of Navelgas: the local workings, the importance this industry had for its inhabitants, and the extraction techniques used from Roman times to panning, which is still practised today as a sport in various championships and can be tried in the nearby river.
Curiosity
The chosco is a raw-cured, smoked sausage typical of Asturian cuisine, protected by a protected geographical indication and traditionally made at pig-slaughtering time, with at least eighty per cent shoulder head meat, fifteen per cent tongue, salt, paprika and garlic. It is stuffed into the pig's caecum, hence its rounded, irregular shape, and smoked for a minimum of seven days to achieve its reddened colour and its sweet-and-sour flavour with a mild smoky touch. It is eaten in slices, raw or cooked, and is a regular ingredient in dishes such as chosco with potatoes or with cachelos. Chosco is also made in Ibias and Cangas del Narcea, although that of the latter district contains no tongue and uses less paprika.
Activity
Declared a Festival of National Tourist Interest, it is held on the last Sunday in July at the top of Aristébano and revolves around the staging of a vaqueira wedding, with the rite and the trousseau of the vaqueiros de alzada.
Activity
From 12 to 18 August around the Campo de San Roque, they were declared of regional tourist interest in 1990. On the 15th the day of the bollo is celebrated, with a handing out of bollo preñao and wine, and on the 16th there is mass, a regional dancing competition and a skittles championship.
Activity
A gold panning contest on the River Navelgas in which competitors look for nuggets by swirling the pan, heir to a practice that in this valley goes back to the Roman gold mining of western Asturias.
Historical milestone
In the hamlet of Tuña, declared Exemplary Village of Asturias in 2000, was born the liberal soldier who in 1820 pronounced at Las Cabezas de San Juan for the Constitution of 1812 and was executed in Madrid in 1823.
Nature
A megalithic structure built between the 4th and 3rd millennium BC on the heights of Las Cabanas, in the sierra of Merillés, above the village of the same name (Tineo). It was discovered by the schoolteacher Luis Tenreiro in the early sixties, and Francisco Jordá Cerdá excavated it in 1962, finding nothing but carbonised remains: the use of the dolmen as a shepherds' shelter, with fires lit inside, had destroyed any grave goods. It preserves four rough orthostats about 80 centimetres high -the one on the south side is missing- which framed a rectangular plan with an entrance to the west, and a capstone measuring 2.70 by 2.05 metres and 25 centimetres thick; it has lost its tumulus mass. Experts place it, together with the Baradal dolmen, among the megaliths of highland areas close to drovers' roads, overlooking the Narcea.
Nature
The fana of Genestaza is a landslide -fana, in Asturian- that opens up beside the village of Genestaza, near Tuña, in the concejo of Tineo. It is an almost unique geological phenomenon in Asturias, where only one other similar case exists, the fana of Putracón, in Llamardal, concejo of Somiedo. The process began in the 19th century with a first breakaway of the western slope of the sierra of La Cabra and continues to advance slowly, crumbling little by little and carrying quartzite stones down its furrow; it is today the largest active fana in Asturias, an enormous scar of loose stone opened above the village. From the neighbouring village of La Azorera a good overall view of the whole fana can be had.
Activity
A variant of the Camino Primitivo that climbs from Borres and Samblismo over the sierra de Fonfaraón to the Puerto del Palo, passing beside the ruins of the pilgrims' hospitals of Paradiella, Fonfaraón and Valparaíso, documented as early as the 14th and 15th centuries.