Llanes

Llanes
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By h.b. - Jun 27, 2011 - 12:46 PM
A place worth a visit in Asturias

Llanes Casino - Photo Wikipedia

The picturesque houses of Llanes, its palaces, beaches and beautiful scenery used as the setting for more than 40 films, documentaries, video-clips, TV adverts and TV series, have given this Asturias fishing port the nickname of the ‘Spanish Hollywood’.

Llanes, on the Costa Verde of Asturias, has become one of the most important locations for Spanish film-making, with a natural backdrop which requires no constructed sets – just what man and nature has already provided.

This permanent film set was presented in Easter 2009 as ‘Llanes de Cine’, a route which takes the visitor around 25 of the most important locations used in Llanes and its surrounding area which have been immortalised on both the small and the big screen.

The Palacio de Patarriú will be recognised by many as the Villa Parres, the building which starred in Juan Antonio Bayona’s ‘El Orfanato’, the orphanage where Belén Rueda, as Laura, grew up and later bought with her husband to convert into a residence for disabled children.

Scenes from the 1994 film, ‘El detective y la muerte’, starring Javier Bardem as Detective Cornelio, were filmed on the beach at La Ballota, and the18th Century Capilla de Cué appeared in scenes for another Gonzalo Suárez film, ‘El Portero – The Goalkeeper’.

One of its best-kept secrets is Gulpiyuri, a horseshoe bay set below sea level and surrounded by a meadow, where the salt water is fed by a system of subterranean caves which bring the tides and waves to this small part of the Asturias coast. Set back 100 metres from the Asturias shoreline, it’s protected as a natural monument and a natural space of the Principality of Asturias.

Llanes also holds its place in the history of Asturias as a major fishing and whaling port, with its sea-faring history depicted in the artist Augustín Ibarrola’s ‘Cubos de la Memoria’, a set of gigantic concrete cubes which stand as a breakwater at the town’s harbour, painted to reflect the history and culture of Llanes.

It’s a place which is rich in history, where parts of the surviving town walls date back to the early 13th Century and where prehistoric man has left his mark in the many caves which scatter this district which covers around 30km of the eastern coast of Asturias.

One of these is in Puertas de Vidiago, 12 kilometres away from Llanes itself, where a strangely shaped limestone rock, known as Peña Tú, juts up from the landscape. The lower overhang of Peña Tú provides natural protection for Bronze Age paintings and engravings, executed in red, which have survived the centuries, although some are now so faded that they are difficult to make out. They are intermingled with Christian crosses which were later carved into the rock as a form of exorcism against the pagan symbols.

A representation of a four-legged animal can still be seen, and there are a number of representations of schematic human figures. But what really stands out here, on the far right of the rock face, is the one metre high carving which is known as ‘the Idol of Peña Tú’.

It’s an abstract image of an individual composed of geometric lines. All that can be made out of the figure’s features are two circles for the eyes and a vertical line for the nose. A number of short lines can also be seen which represent his left foot. He appears to be clothed in an elaborate tunic and, on his left, is what appears to be a dagger or a sword pointing downwards, indicating that he was a great warrior or a chief of the tribe.

It’s thought that this Neolithic rock art represents a warrior in his funeral robes who was probably buried nearby, perhaps in a cavity which exists at the base of the rock.

The figure was once known locally as ‘la cabeza del gentil’ – ‘the heathen’s head’. It’s believed to date from 2,000 BC and is protected as a BIC Cultural Interest Site. The first archaeological investigations here were in 1914, which shortly afterwards led to the discovery of more than 50 burial sites nearby, which are believed to date back beyond 3,000 BC.

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