Discovering the Liebana: Introduction
They constitute the Picos de Europa, one of the most impressive and legendary places in the rich and varied Spanish orography.
On the edge of some mountains, whose highest peaks support the hundreds and hundreds of stars that pour the mysterious light of the Universe on them, small mountain towns survive with iron determination, preserving, in many cases, the ancient customs of their ancestors.
They are simple although eminently picturesque towns, that even belonging to three different communities –Asturias, Cantabria and Palencia and in some section, even León- continue to be twinned by that same and necessary solidarity with which together they fought against the terrible Roman legions of Augustus.
It was, precisely, in these magnificent settings of the Picos de Europa, where legend says that when encountering seven 'lightning stones' that fell from the sky –that was the name in those times, both meteorites and prehistoric axes- he predicted the proud Augustus, who in his destiny figured to become the future Caesar of Rome.
There is, in this impressive natural theater, an artistic and cultural heart, whose beats supposed the preservation of a western culture, in full decline after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
This heart, fed by the patience of centuries, the solid arteries of the mountains and the fertile valleys that serve as its sternum or breastplate, has a name of its own that stands out strongly for itself: the Liebana.
Being the Liébana a kind of metaphorical Shangri-Lá, whose fertile valley is surrounded by those zealous guardians who are the Picos de Europa, the peaks of Palencia and the Peña Labra and Peña Sagra mountain ranges, it is not surprising that it constituted a lighthouse of Cultural resistance in that early medieval period that followed the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.
Losing yourself among its valleys, mountain ranges, mountains and mountains is an adventure that invites you to enter the empire of the senses - without the erotic charisma accentuated by the Japanese director Nagisha Oshima in his film of the same name - making the traveler feel like a participant. of a journey through time, without the complicated technicalities of the fictional machine devised by the prolific HG Wells.
The purpose, therefore, of this first post, is none other than to show some of the peculiarities of this genuine region, blessed by Mother Earth, which I hope will be to your liking and interest.
Having said that, I have no other wish, than to invite you to discover some of the most important places in this heart of beauty and culture, which I fervently hope and wish, leave you a pleasant impression.
NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property.
