Village
Cangas de Onís is a town in Eastern Asturias, situated at the confluence of the Sella and Güeña rivers, which was capital of the Kingdom of Asturias until the year 774, when King Pelayo settled there after the battle of Covadonga in 722. It has around 6,300 inhabitants and received the title of city in 1908. Its well-known Roman bridge, symbol of the town, is actually a medieval work. In the nearby valley stands the chapel of the Santa Cruz, a temple of Roman origin rebuilt in the time of Favila of Asturias, and within its municipal area, already inside the Picos de Europa national park, are the sanctuary of Covadonga, with Pelayo's tomb, and the lakes of Enol, Ercina and Bricial, of great importance for cycling. The town's coat of arms bears the motto Minima Urbium Maxima Sedium.
Nature
It was born on 24 July 1918 as the Montaña de Covadonga National Park, the first in Spain, driven by Pedro Pidal, Marquis of Villaviciosa, inspired by his trip to Yellowstone Park; at the time it covered 16,925 hectares. In 1995 it was expanded to the three massifs of the Picos de Europa up to 64,660 hectares, and in 2014 it grew again to its current 67,127, spread across Asturias, León and Cantabria. In 2003 Unesco declared it a biosphere reserve, and with nearly two million visitors a year it is the third most visited national park in Spain, after Teide and the Sierra de Guadarrama.
Monument
A neo-Romanesque temple built entirely of pink limestone between 1877 and 1901, designed by Roberto Frassinelli and carried out by the architect Federico Aparici y Soriano; it received the title of minor basilica on 11 September 1901. It replaced the original yew-wood church that King Alfonso I had built in the cave in the year 740, destroyed by a fire in 1777 along with everything the Santa Cueva held. Frassinelli, known as the German of Corao, conceived the new temple, but not being an architect he handed the project over to Aparici, although he directed the work on the crypt. The building, with three naves, the central one higher, and three stepped apses, stands out for the slender spires of its towers and for the pinkish tone of the stone, which contrasts with the green of the landscape.
Monument
A hollow opened in the rock of Mount Auseva, in Cangas de Onís, where the Virgin of Covadonga is venerated and where tradition places the victory of Pelayo; it is reached through a cave or by climbing 103 steps from the pool. The sanctuary that occupied it burned down in 1777, destroying the original carving of the Virgin; the current one, from the 16th century, was donated in 1778 by the cathedral of Oviedo, and during the Civil War it disappeared until it was found in 1939 at the Spanish embassy in France. The current chapel, neo-Romanesque, is the work of Luis Menéndez-Pidal y Álvarez. The cave also served as a royal pantheon: buried there were Pelayo, his wife Queen Gaudiosa, and Alfonso I the Catholic with Queen Ermesinda.
Nature
El Enol, at 1,070 metres, and La Ercina, at 1,108, are two lakes of glacial origin in the western massif of the Picos de Europa, in the concejo of Cangas de Onís; there is a third lake, El Bricial, which only carries water during the thaw. They are reached by a road of about fourteen and a half kilometres that starts at the Real Sitio de Covadonga and reaches El Enol first. Its use since 1983 as the finish of a stage of the Vuelta ciclista a España popularised the spot internationally, which has forced access by private car to be restricted for six months of the year, with buses running from Cangas de Onís. Near La Ercina, at Buferrera, iron, manganese and mercury mines were worked until 1979, and today there is a car park, a visitor centre and a refuge there.
Monument
Despite the name by which it is known, it is a Gothic work of the 14th century built in the time of Alfonso XI on the site of an earlier crossing; a replica of the Cruz de la Victoria has hung from its great central arch since 1939.
Monument
The chapel of Santa Cruz stands in Cangas de Onís (Asturias), on a dolmen from the 3rd millennium BC known as the Dolmen de Santa Cruz. In the year 737, King Favila and his wife, Queen Froiluba, ordered a temple to be built on the mound to house the oak cross that Pelayo had carried at the Battle of Covadonga and which would later become the Cross of Victory, consecrated on 27 October of that same year. It is considered the first Christian temple built in Asturias after the Muslim invasion, and Favila and Froiluba were buried in it. Restored in 1633, the chapel was destroyed in 1936, during the Civil War, and the building visited today is a reconstruction by the architect Luis Menéndez-Pidal, completed in 1951.
Nature
A natural cavity discovered in 1916 next to the village of Cardes, in the concejo of Cangas de Onís, reached only on foot along a one-kilometre path. Studied by the Count of la Vega del Sella and Hugo Obermaier, it preserves examples of Solutrean and Magdalenian cave art: depictions of animals -horses, goats, deer and bison- and geometric figures called tectiforms, which may represent hunting traps. Among the finds is a cave bear canine engraved with the image of a bird, today in the Museo Arqueológico de Asturias, along with scrapers and other flint objects. It was declared a monument in 1985 and inspired the illustrator and archaeologist Roberto Frassinelli.
Monument
A Benedictine monastery in the parish of Villanueva, in the concejo of Cangas de Onís, considered one of the most important examples of Romanesque architecture in Asturias. The first ecclesiastical building is attributed to the time of Alfonso I the Catholic, son-in-law of don Pelayo, although no trace remains of that pre-Romanesque structure: in the 12th century it went from church to monastery, and from the Romanesque period it retains part of its walls and its three stepped, semicircular apses, with historiated capitals depicting hunting scenes, dragons and the scene of the lady and the knight. At the end of the 20th century the old Benedictine convent was converted into a Parador Nacional de Turismo, opened on 8 July 1998. It is declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico (a former Spanish heritage-protection designation) following its publication in the Gaceta de Madrid in 1907.