Castropol

The municipality of Castropol has one of the densest concentrations of catalogued hillforts in Asturias. The oldest traces go back to the Acheulean culture, quartzite hand-axes found at Espiela (Villadún) and worked stones from Arnao-Figueras. From the Bronze and Iron Ages come the remains of hillfort settlements scattered across the area: the coastal fort at Punta del Corno in Villadún (Barres), which has three separate defensive enclosures; Os Castros in the parish of Piñera; the small fort of La Corona de Iramola in San Juan de Moldes; and further examples at Tol, Santalla (Presno), and Seares.

Archaeological work has so far been carried out only at Os Castros (Piñera), limiting what is known in detail. Among the finds, a bronze-age bivalve sickle mould is considered particularly significant. Some historians identify the ancient inhabitants of this area as the Egobarri, a people the Romans classified within the Galaic-Lucensian group, placing the territory under the conventus of Lugo, a Roman administrative boundary that ran to the river Navia and shaped the region for a long time.

Rome reused many of these hillforts after conquest, integrating them into an economy based on agriculture and gold mining; traces of Roman gold extraction survive near the river Fornelo. In the medieval period, the monastery of Taule (Tol) was among the earliest documented settlements in the area, later passing in life usufruct to Count Gundemaro and his wife. The powerful monastery of San Juan de Corias also made its influence felt here.

The territory was the subject of prolonged dispute between the sees of Lugo and Oviedo, resolved in the twelfth century when King Alfonso VII of León assigned the lands between the rivers Eo and Navia to the bishop of Oviedo. Around 1275, Alfonso X founded the Puebla de Rovoredo (today Reboledo), considered the first such royal settlement in Asturias. When the Bishop of Lugo then established a new town at Castropol, recognising it as a defensible and commercially useful site, Rovoredo was abandoned, the only known case in Asturias of one royal foundation being superseded by another.

By the following century, Castropol had become the economic and administrative centre between the Navia and the Eo, gaining a weekly market. Disputes with Ribadeo continued for centuries, and English troops at one point occupied Castropol and other towns on the estuary, extracting payment for their withdrawal.

Castropol's built heritage spans religious and civil buildings across several villages in the municipality. The Chapel of Santa María del Campo is a rectangular structure with two small lateral bodies. It survived the fire that destroyed much of the town in 1587.

Its facade, marked by buttresses, a round-arched doorway, three mascarons above it, and a founding inscription, is its most distinctive feature, and it contains an eighteenth-century altarpiece. The Parish Church of Santiago Apóstol dates from the late sixteenth century. It has three naves, with the central nave taller and wider than the others, separated by columns and covered by a star vault.

A tower added in the eighteenth century is topped with a slate roof and a spire. The church retains a collection of baroque altarpieces from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Palacio de Valledor is a U-shaped two-storey building with a rectangular courtyard.

The ground-floor entrance has a round arch between pilasters and a coat of arms above. The palace is from the seventeenth century, with an attached chapel from the eighteenth. The Palacio de Santa Cruz del Marcenado (formerly Montenegro) is also U-shaped, with an old square battlemented tower at one corner.

Its main stone portal features a large round arch with decorated voussoirs and Ionic capitals, while a side chapel contains a baroque altarpiece dedicated to the Immaculate Conception. Villa Rosita was built and extended in phases. It has a battlemented tower with four corner gargoyles, and two wooden enclosed balconies added in the twentieth century.

The main facade entrance is framed by two large fluted pilasters rising from a tall base. The monument to Fernando Villamil, by sculptor Cipriano Folgueras, is made of stone and bronze. It shows the naval officer on a tall plinth, with an allegorical female figure representing the homeland behind him, and a giant column bearing a globe surmounted by a winged figure.

The Parish Church of San Esteban de Barres has a single nave with two chapels and lateral porticos. A south chapel, built by the local fishing and seafaring community in honour of Saint Peter, contains a baroque altarpiece with Solomonic columns showing Saint Peter, Saint Elmo, and the Immaculate Conception. In Figueras, the Palacio de los Pardo Donlebún (also known as the palace of the Counts of Trénor) is a seventeenth-century building with two symmetrical rectangular battlemented wings flanking a central tower, and an entrance with iron gates and family crests on small turrets above.

The Hotel Peñalba is an Art Nouveau building commissioned by a returning emigrant as a summer house. Rectangular in plan with circular turrets, it has large windows and terraces on three facades decorated with plant motifs. The interior is arranged around a central courtyard covered by a glass skylight.

The building has been restored in recent years and has a garden with Modernist sculptures. Castropol has also appeared in literature: the town features in José Francisco Rodil Lombardía's novel *La noche de las luminarias* (Velasco Ediciones, 2018 and 2019), set in Castropol and Lugo during the Civil War, and in Luis Cernuda's 1937 story *En la costa de Santiniebla*, published in the Valencia literary journal *Hora de España*.