Mythological Asturias trails: the Xanas Gorge

The writer and theosophist Mario Roso de Luna spoke, in an interesting novel book, of his amazing traveling and spiritual experiences for what he called "the dark Asturias."

For him, 'the dark Asturias', was not, but that deep and traditional Asturias, immersed in its great myths and mysteries, with its lost villages between mountains, the unknown roads between its imposing mountain range, the cliffs of its coasts, trimmed to the peak over the media Cantabrian Sea and the deep feeling of some people, who still kept the presence of the old gods alive.

In this regard, there was a distinguished Asturian, named Constantine Cabal, who also dedicated himself to touring the wonderful Asturian geography, collecting, for posterity, that great folk wealth of myths and legends, which under the title of the Gods of the Life and the Gods of Death, brought to the hands of the urban incredulous, the vision of a rural and fantastic world, where the old gods were still very much alive.

Part of these wonderful traditions, as well as an interesting presence of these mythological characters, sometimes benefactors and sometimes furious defenders of their surroundings, meet in this extraordinary place, which since time immemorial and based on these traditions that we have been commenting on, receives the suggestive name of 'the Gorge of the Xanas'.

The Xanas, to understand us, were the ancient Greco-Roman nymphs, although Don Constantino Cabal, a shrewd man where there were them, intended to see in them - and perhaps rightly so - a deformation of the old name of ‘Diana’.

That is, according to their vision of Asturian mythology, the Xanas would be those same targets that inhabited the deepest part of the forests and used to ignite the imagination of mortals, bathing naked in their fountains and natural pools.

Returning to the topic at hand, it could be said that the Gorge of the Xanas is an extraordinary and magical environment, which takes place in the main habitat of several of the most beautiful and impressive councils of Asturian geography, such as Morcín, Teverga and Quirós .

It is a journey full of natural places, often indescribable for their beauty, which develop through dense forests and vertigo gorges, where formerly the inhabitants of the surrounding villages thought they inhabited extraordinary beings.

And in fact, if the traveler intends to make an adventure that is really worthwhile and from which he will not leave, not at all disappointed, he will see that along with the mythological Xanas, he will also have the opportunity to live or present the presence of another myth, whose origin, no less immemorial, dates back to the dawn of time, such as the Cuélebre or terrible dragon, which according to legends, inhabits caves and is the custodian of great treasures.

You will see, as you go along your journey, that not far from where the rivers widen in deep pools, there is also a cave that carries precisely that name and drags the reputation of being the lair of a terrible Cuélebre.

Or he will also encounter, observing how villagers from nearby villages, such as Pedroveya, frown in front of the storm clouds that are coming across the horizon, superstitiously cross their fingers and mutter that the Nuberu is approaching and fear the moment and the place where you unload your sinister cargo.

The Nuberu, so that they understand it, is another of the gods of Asturian mythology, a kind of Jupiter Tonante, comparatively speaking or lord of the storms, which as commented at the beginning, rewards or punishes according to very subjective criteria, but later of all, it is part of the daily feeling of Asturian farmers.

The road, which runs for several kilometers, ends, at the end of these, on that general road that connects Trubia - a famous Asturian town, where its armament factory stands out - to the Pola de Lena, crossing part of the councils mentioned above, leaving ports of great beauty, such as the one of Cobertoira, very close to which, the famous Fresnedo rock shelters are located.

In addition, another singularity that has the Gorge of the Xanas, is that it also formed or formed part in the past, of the so-called Route of the Relics, which is based on the belief that it was through these mountainous paths where the rebel Don Pelayo, escorted by soldiers from the council of Morcín, fled Toledo when the Muslim invasion, carrying with him a chest full of relics, which was hidden for centuries in the highest and most impenetrable of one of the most sacred mountains of Asturian geography : the Monsacro.

In short: a recommended route, in which the sensation of living an unforgettable mythological adventure is also linked to the pleasure of the wonderful places it passes through.

NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property.

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