Search for it online and you'll find nothing more than four sentences about it. Unfold a map of Asturias, locate the municipality of Allande. If you want to find it quickly, move your index finger towards the neighboring municipality of Grandas de Salime. Pass the reservoir. The village is before the mythical Alto del Palo . If we're coming from the East, like the Three Wise Men in search of spiritual treasure, then it's after the Palo. Either way, it's a tiny dot in a large, mountainous municipality of 370 square kilometers with barely 2.000 inhabitants: Pola de Allande.
What do we find in San Emiliano?
It's made known online and in other sources that San Emiliano, the village in question, is the seventh largest in the municipality. However, we were left wondering whether it has 5 or 500 inhabitants. Finally, we decided to visit to find out what it's really like, demographically and sociologically speaking. The road goes up and down. We know, because we read it before leaving, that a rich vegetation of oak, beech, chestnut, and birch trees extends across this complex, Paleozoic-era landscape . Although we also regret, as we've learned from other sources, that the native flora has been partially replaced by pine plantations. There's a bit of everything; we see it with our own eyes as we drive up and down the road. The books say that there's a great deal of wildlife in the surrounding area , including wild boar, capercaillie, birds of prey, hares, roe deer, and even the occasional bear. And we don't doubt it . Just before parking on the outskirts of the village, we came across some rather neglected vineyards. In this, too, the four lines that mention San Emiliano are right: the cultivation of the vine, introduced to the area in the 11th century by the Benedictines, is little more than a memory.
We contemplate the village before entering. A magical halo the crown. It is an elongated and sinuous low cloud like the road we have left. A lady is coming. Pull a rope to which a cow is attached. The cowbell passes by us as if it were in another dimension. She greets us with her hand and takes us out of self-absorption. Goodbye, very good.
We enter stealthy in the town, without making us notice, only with our reflections and our intimate hypotheses. If the fog envelops us we will have achieved more authenticity in this journey, but of doubtful return, to the Middle Ages. If we go in the cold months we will leave doubt before time: the smoky chimneys tell us that there is human life there. And yes, all of a sudden two children go by all on their bicycles: bicycles!
Typical houses of San Emiliano
As we delve deeper into the heart of this ancient village , we begin to see a few more residents, as if they had sensed our footsteps hundreds of meters back and decided to come out and greet us, clearing up any doubts. We greet them in return, so as not to be impolite. At one point, someone invites us for a local wine in a cellar that, quite possibly, once housed a stable. Once again, we consult the textbook: the traditional house in Allande is a two-story, square-block type, with the living quarters and stable on the ground floor.
Perhaps it's the wine, almost a mysterious elixir, that makes us return to the open air and the mental fog dissipates. Then the houses appear, with slate walls and roofs. They are familiar elements, but for some reason, much more rustic than anywhere else. Here, the typical house of western Asturias blends with medieval stonework everywhere , and the beautiful granaries and raised granaries, despite belonging to the 18th or 19th centuries, seem more like they served ancient vassals from the 15th. Their symbols appear ancient, and we can't decipher them because perhaps this, too, is part of the legend of San Emiliano. At most, we know this: There are very noticeable inscriptions, with various ornamental and symbolic motifs, that characterize a decorative style known as the Allande style.
Lacking further clarification from the documentarians, we find a decidedly ambiguous sign: San Emiliano was declared an artistic and picturesque site in 1971. Picturesque? At least we have a specific date. It seems that from the 16th century, when the Casa de La Torre was cataloged, until 1971, time passed silently without anyone to date it, and that from 1971 until our arrival, nothing else happened in this time tunnel.
We've already mentioned the Casa de La Torre . Indeed. It certainly doesn't go unnoticed: This stately complex is organized around a three-story, quadrangular tower, built in the 16th century, to which two shorter structures are attached, one contemporary with the tower and the other slightly later. The tower displays four coats of arms belonging to some of the most powerful families of Allande. There's another piece of information: powerful families. Truthfully, we already suspected as much. In general, the buildings of San Emiliano are no small matter. There are indeed powerful figures here, or at least there used to be. There's also the Casa de Santos, its Romanesque church , and so on.
In short, our walk becomes a vicious, allegorical circle revolving around our own ghosts. We end up seeing expanses of land nearby dedicated to cereal crops. But someone tells us that this is no longer the case in modern times. And even though we're also assured that subsistence farming and vegetable gardens are outdated and that donkeys are endangered, something of all this still exists in San Emiliano. A protected space deep within Allande and history, which could also be just a dream.
Photo report by: Alex Badía
Text: © Ramón Molleda for asturias.com
