Five finalists for Spain's most beautiful village are all in Asturias, according to National Geographic

Five Asturian villages have been selected as finalists for the most beautiful village in Spain by National Geographic.

Celorio, Lastres, San Esteban de Cuñaba, Novellana and Bandujo represent the diversity of the Asturian landscape: from the limestone cliffs of Llanes to the medieval isolation of the interior.

Each of these enclaves offers a unique combination of heritage, authenticity and resistance to depopulation.

The paradox that defines Asturias is its double condition: it is the most mountainous community in Spain, with a large part of its territory defined by extreme slopes, and at the same time it is one of the most maritime, with one of the least human-altered coastlines. This duality is the best argument for a trip through the principality. The Green Coast is the sum of limestone cliffs shaped over three hundred million years, beaches that only exist at low tide, and small gorges that lead to villages where the census often does not exceed ten inhabitants.

CELORIO: COAST, ROMANESQUE RUINS AND DALINIAN OPTICAL EFFECTS

The secret of this enclave on the karst coast of Llanes, on the other side of the Sierra del Cuera, is its geography of stunning beaches, moulded by currents and tides over centuries. The most romantic of them all is San Martín, also known as El Portiellu, which is actually two distinct beaches that join at low tide. Its romance lies in the ruins of a Romanesque hermitage that overlook the sea from the top of the cliff, right on the coastal Camino de Santiago. There is also La Tayada, a small hidden jewel with barely a hundred metres of sand and rock, accessible only by footpaths. Among the most surreal is Borizu beach, where from a specific point on the small peninsula that flanks it, an optical effect known as the Face of Christ can be seen — the superposition of a hillfort and a cliff that form, depending on the tide, the profile of Christ's face. The Monastery and Church of San Salvador has been a witness to the exceptional nature of the Celorio coast for a thousand years, with its Las Cámaras tower overlooking the beach.

LASTRES: A CINEMATIC FISHING VILLAGE WITH WHALING HISTORY

From the Mirador de San Roque, Lastres is revealed as a cascade of reddish roofs and glazed balconies tumbling towards the harbour, with the dark blue Cantabrian Sea in the background. Walking through its streets is to practice a tightrope flânerie, where each step opens a different rural frame. The Torre del Reloj, built in the mid-15th century and rehabilitated in the mid-17th, marked the rhythm of the fishermen who for centuries set sail from this same port to hunt whales in the Cantabrian. The television series Doctor Mateo turned Lastres into the fictional village of San Martín del Sella, attracting pioneering tourists eager for television destinations. The town has transcended that tourist fame without completely losing its soul as a fishing village. In the harbour, the fish market still smells of freshly unloaded sea bream and monkfish.

SAN ESTEBAN DE CUÑABA: A PARENTHESIS IN TIME AND SPACE

A photograph from 19 October 1990 shows the then Prince of Asturias, very young, receiving the Premio al Pueblo Ejemplar de Asturias in San Esteban de Cuñaba. At that time there was no telephone signal. Thirty-five years later, the village remains a parenthesis: there is barely any mobile coverage. The narrow road that climbs from the Desfiladero de La Hermida —the longest gorge in Spain— to San Esteban is an experience in itself. Upon arrival, the village welcomes us with the trunk of an old chestnut tree born at the end of the 16th century and which died in the autumn of 1994; the neighbours preserved it as a tribute to all the generations that enjoyed its shade and its chestnuts. If in the 1990s a hundred inhabitants seemed few, the six registered today seem like castaways on an island of stone and wood. San Esteban has lost the war against depopulation, but remains an ancestral reserve.

NOVELLANA: RESISTANCE AGAINST OBLIVION

Just eleven minutes from Cudillero, that colourful amphitheatre that absorbs all the tourist sighs, lies Novellana — barely 318 inhabitants distributed between Castañeras, Resiellas and the main nucleus. The village was chosen, together with Soto de Luiña, as Pueblo Ejemplar in 1992. The recognition came not only for the wonder of its coast, but for the absolute commitment of its inhabitants not to let it be lost in the oblivion of depopulation. With determination, the neighbours restored the old school, recovered the pilgrims' hospital, and kept alive the Church of Santiago Apóstol from the 18th century, guardian of the Cristo de los Vaqueiros. Three beaches complete the arguments to come here: La Playa del Silencio, revealed after descending more than 200 steps carved into the cliff, and the coves of Salencia and L'Airín, separated by the islet of El Fariñón.

For InasTour, the recognition of these five villages by National Geographic confirms the growing interest of international buyers in properties located in authentic rural and coastal enclaves of Asturias, where quality of life and landscape are the main values.

BANDUJO: A MEDIEVAL ISLAND BETWEEN HÓRREOS AND TOWERS

The isolation of this area was for decades its sentence. Electricity and running water did not arrive until well into the 1980s. But that same remoteness, paradoxically, ended up saving it: the development of the 1960s and 1970s could not enter with brick and cement, and today Bandujo is one of the best-preserved medieval villages in northern Spain, declared a Bien de Interés Cultural. The neighbourhoods of Bandujo —El Toral, La Molina, El Palacio, Entelaiglesia, Campalverde— are connected by narrow paths that seem to take us away in space and time, between hórreos and paneras. The most striking feature is the Torre de Bandujo, which is cylindrical, an absolute rarity. Next to the Church of Santa María, in the cemetery, the graves rest on the ground under wooden crosses, covered on 1 November with mosaics of natural flowers.

Viajar por Asturias es descubrir que todavía hay lugares que parecen que acaban de ser descubiertos, en los que la sensación de aventura es total.

En un mundo que se acelera, San Esteban es algo parecido a una reserva ancestral. Aunque haya perdido la guerra contra la despoblación.

The selection of these five villages by National Geographic highlights the richness and diversity of Asturias: a territory where the coast and the mountains, history and the present, merge into a unique landscape. From the Romanesque ruins that watch over the Cantabrian Sea to the medieval tower that defies time, each of these villages tells a story of resistance, beauty and authenticity. In a world that seems to be accelerating, they remain as living museums of a rural culture that continues to seek a balance between memory and the future.