Asturias

“ The ancient realm of the Asturias had spread far beyond the limits of the sierras whose craggy solitudes had protected its infancy, and had expanded into the kingdoms of Leon and Navarre, whose petty monarchs wasted in attacks upon each other the energy and the treasure which would have been more profitably employed in thwarting the ambitious designs of the infidel. ”

“ And thou, free Asturias, encamp'd on the height,
Pour down thy dark sons to the vintage of fight!
Wake, wake! the old soil where thy children repose,
Sounds hollow and deep to the trampling of foes. ”

“ Low of stature, thick-set and awkward, as strong and as hairy almost as bears, the 17 men of Asturias and Galicia, of Leon and Biscay, century after century come and go, living as their fathers lived, neither better nor worse, caring nothing for Arab or Dutchman, and little even for the Spanish kings; proud as ever of Pelayo, of the mountains that cradled Spanish liberty, of their great antiquity, which they boast as greater than that of any living nation; superstitious, irritable, and impetuous, but honest, frank, and sincere; implacable as enemies, but faithful as friends. ”

“ To this day, twelve centuries after the occurrence, the peasantry of Asturias are divided between the descendants of those who aided the patriot Pelayo against the Moors, and those who did not—the latter being stigmatized as vaqueros; while the Andalusian Morisco keeps alive the story of Granada's grandeur, and dreams of Moslem warriors, of Abencerrage knights, and the restoration of former greatness. So strong is the influence of tradition and dead ancestry. ”

“ Or start from your old battle-dells.
There are streams of unconquer'd Asturias,
That have roll'd with your father's free blood;
Oh! leave on the graves of the mighty,
Proud marks where their children have stood! ”

“ If a transatlantic liner touched at one of the northern ports, such as Vigo, Santander, Bilbao, it would open up an untrodden Switzerland with fertile valleys and noble hills. No pleasanter summer tour, on bicycle or afoot, could be made than through the Basque provinces, Asturias, the national cradle of Spain, or in beautiful Galicia with its trout rivers. In summer the climate is cool and pleasant, and the most isolated valleys are so safe that any two women could travel alone with security. ”

“ The numerous assertors of these privileges among the Asturians of the present day, lead me to think that in the earliest times of the Spanish monarchy every soldier was raised to the rank of a Franklin. But circumstances are strangely altered. Asturias is one of the poorest provinces of Spain, and the noble inhabitants having, for the most part, inherited no other patrimony from their ancestors than a strong muscular frame, are compelled to make the best of it among the more feeble tribes of the south. ”

“ This final view from the culminating point of the roadway is one of the most striking of all.
In Spain it seems never permissible to travel entirely for pleasure. The gossips provide you a business if you have none ready to hand. In the Rioja district you are branded as a wine-bibber. In the Asturias you are promptly consigned to the mines. Such was my fate at Carreño, the little hamlet which sits astride the watershed. An aged crone was squatting on the hearth in the Venta, performing the functions of a meat-jack over the smouldering embers of the fire. ”

“ There is a greater similarity between Galicia and Portugal than between the former and any other province of Spain.
Although they lie so close together, Asturias differs widely from its sister province both in the character of its people and its scenery. The Romans took two hundred years to subdue it, and the Moors never obtained a footing there. The Asturians are a hardy, independent race, proud of giving the title to the heir-apparent of the Spanish throne. The people of this province, like their neighbours the Basques, are handsome {27}and robust in appearance ”

“ Leon was the name of this fortress, one of the strategical points, not only of the early Romans, but of the Arabs who conquered the country, and later of the nascent Christian kingdom of Asturias. In the tenth century, or, better still, toward the beginning of the eleventh, and after the final retreat of the Moors and their terrible general Almanzor, Leon became the recognized capital of Asturias. ”

“ By this unwise arrangement the Asturian army was weak at every point: it was impossible to concentrate more than 5,000 men for the defence of any part of the long and narrow province. The fact was that the Junta looked solely to the defence of its own land, and had no conception that the protection of the Asturias should be treated as only a section of the great problem of the protection of the whole of Northern Spain. ”

“ That general frequently mastered the Asturias, but could never maintain himself there; because the country is a long defile, lying between the great mountains and the sea, and being crossed by a succession of parallel ridges and rivers, is admirably calculated for partizan warfare in connexion with a fleet. Thus, if he penetrated towards Gallicia, British and Spanish frigates, from Coruña, landing troops at the ports of Gihon, Santander, or Santona, could always form a junction with the great bands of Longa, Mina, and Amor, and excite insurrections on his rear. ”

“ The Spaniards who under Pelayo had taken refuge in the mountains of Asturias, in 716 founded a small government called the kingdom of Oviedo. There the seeds of liberty, trampled by adversity, took root, and from the patriot soil arose a nation that spread its branches wide over the land. Gradually the Christian kingdoms enlarged. First Galicia, then, two hundred years later, Leon and Castile were added to the little empire. ”

“ The holy [Pg 265] man knew all the Christians of the Asturias, whether living in the almost inaccessible caves and dens of the cliffs, or in the narrow valleys imbedded among the mountains. He represented them to Pelayo as brave and hardy, and ready for any desperate enterprise that might promise deliverance; but they were disheartened by the continued subjection of their country, and on the point, many of them, of descending into the plains and submitting, like the rest of their countrymen, to the yoke of the conquerors. ”

“ Nor is the time lost. For the tourist who{146} leaves the capital of Asturias with the intention of going, as would a pilgrim, to Covadonga (by stage and not by rail!) will be delightfully surprised by the weird and savage wildness of the country through which he is driven. ”

“ It is the old story alike of peoples, sects, and individuals; discipline, begotten by necessity, engenders strength, which fattened by luxury swells to weakness.
The beginning of the eleventh century finds the Christians occupying about half the Peninsula, that is to say the kingdoms of Leon, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal. Leon was but another name for the kingdom of Oviedo, or Asturias, the birthplace of Spanish nationality. ”

“ By referring to a map of Spain you will find the Asturias in the far north, all of four hundred miles from the scene of the disastrous battle; and here it was, in the mountain valleys, surrounded by frowning peaks and gloomy gorges, that Pelayo the Cave King, first ruler of the Goths after their defeat, established his little kingdom. Living at first in caves, then in rude habitations of earth and stone, the hardy mountaineers gradually gathered in hamlets and villages, and in a few years were strong enough to resist the forces that finally penetrated to their abode. ”

“ In the middle ages the Christian kings of Asturias (Galicia?) grew more and more powerful, and their territory stretched out to the south and to the east.
On the Miño River, Tuy and Orense were frontier towns, to populate which, bishoprics were erected. To the south of Oviedo, and almost on a line with the two Galician towns, Astorga, Leon and Burgos were strongly fortified, and formed an imaginary line to the north of which ruled Christian monarchs, and to the south Arab emirs. ”

“ As the Hidalguia branches out through every [Pg 34] male whose father enjoys that privilege, Spain is overrun with gentry, who earn their living in the meanest employments. The province of Asturias having afforded shelter to that small portion of the nation which preserved the Spanish name and throne against the efforts of the conquering Arabs ”

“ We were now in the Asturias, and about noon we reached Navias, a small fishing town, situate on a ria or firth; in the neighbourhood are ragged mountains, called the Sierra de Buron, which stand in the shape of a semi-circle. We saw a small vessel in the harbour, which we subsequently learned was from the Basque provinces, come for a cargo of cider or sagadua, the beverage so dearly loved by the Basques. As we passed along the narrow street, Antonio was hailed with an “Ola” from a species of shop in which three men, apparently shoemakers, were seated. ”

“ This rich province they held for many years, and it would seem to them to be more than an equivalent for the bare and humid mountains of Galicia and the Asturias, or the higher Pyrenees, which alone in the Peninsula were exempt from their sway. The Arabs and the Moors of Barbary are the last great race that has occupied Spain. Jews and a few Gipsies are the only peoples that have entered since. ”

“ In fact, the assembling of a Cortes had been proposed by our first authorized agent, Mr. Stuart, to the Juntas of Galicia and Asturias. Some of the difficulties which would attend it were then perceived; the Asturians proposed that it should assemble at Oviedo, the Galicians at Villa Franca in the Bierzo, each Junta wishing that it should be convoked near their own place of abode; and for the purpose of retaining their power, they wished to enlarge the deputation, so that all their own members might be included. ”

“ One class of the Asturians deserving special mention is that of the nomad cattle-drovers known as Baqueros or Vaqueros, who tend their herds on the mountains of Leitariegos in summer, and along the coast in winter; forming a separate caste, with distinctive customs, and rarely or never intermarrying with their neighbours.
For the modern condition of the principality (including climate, fauna and flora) , see S. Canals, Asturias: informancion sobre su presente estado (Madrid, 1900) ; and G. Casal, Memorias de historia 821 natural y médica, de Asturias (Oviedo, 1900) . ”

“ Pelayo, the son of Doña Luz and Duke Favila, who, as we have seen, was killed by Witiza in Tuy, fled from Toledo to the north of Spain, living among the savage inhabitants of Asturias.
A few years later, when Rodrigo, who was king at the time, and by some strange coincidence{147} Pelayo's cousin as well, lost the battle of Guadalete and his life to boot, the Arabs conquered the whole peninsula and placed in Gijon, a seaport town of Asturias, a garrison under the command of one Munuza. The latter fell desperately in love with Pelayo's sister Hermesinda, whom he had met in the village of Cangas. ”

“ The Asturias and Santander are remarkable for the number of statesmen and economists they have produced in proportion to the population. In the Basque Provinces we find an entirely different race, not perhaps of so muscular a build, but active, and capable of great endurance. ”

“ It had been impossible, despite laws and penalties, to prevent the intermingling of the races: all that we certainly know is that the inhabitants of Galicia, Asturias, Viscaya, Navarro, and Aragon have always exhibited the characteristics of a hardy, fighting, pushing race, as distinguished from the Andaluces, the Valencianos, the Murcianos, and people of Granada, in whom the languid blood of a Southern people and the more marked trace of Arabic heritage are apparent. ”

“ The barons and the great churchmen, who, a few months before, would have flocked from all parts to do him honor, now appeared in very scanty numbers, or they permitted him to pass unnoticed through the lands and by the homes which they perhaps owed to his bounty. He and his sister Eleanor must have remembered with a sigh the time when he first set foot in Spain, thirty-eight years before, and found the shores of Asturias, and the highways of Castille, thronged with loyal crowds, hastening to tender their homage. ”

“ But the Galician divisions, though the most numerous, were not the only units which were told off to the new ‘Army of the Left.’ Asturias had been free of invaders since Ney and Bonnet retired from its borders in June 1809. The Central Junta ordered Ballasteros to join the main army with the few regular troops in the principality, and ten battalions of the local volunteers, a force of over 9,000 men. The Asturian Junta, always very selfish and particularist in its aims, made some protests but obeyed. Nine of its less efficient regiments were left behind to watch Bonnet. ”

“ The remaining provinces of Leon, Biscay, the Asturias, Galicia, Old and New Castile, Estremadura, Murcia, and Andalusia, fell to the crown of Castile, which, thus extending its sway over an unbroken line of country from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean, seemed by the magnitude, of its territory, as well as by its antiquity, (for it was there that the old Gothic monarchy may be said to have first revived after the great Saracen invasion,) to be entitled to a pre-eminence over the other states of the Peninsula. ”

“ Prosperity then smiled on the city soon to{153} become the capital of the kingdom of Asturias. The cathedral church was built on the spot where Ordoño had erected a palace; the first stone was laid in 1199.
The traditions, legends, and historical events which took place in the kingdom's capital until late in the thirteenth century belong to Spanish history, or what is known as such. Ordoño II. was mysteriously put to death, by the Counts of Castile, some say; Alfonso IV.—a monk rather than a king—renounced his right to the throne, and retired to a convent to pray for his soul. ”