Before visiting Asturias, I knew nothing of Covadonga, or the special place it holds in the religious, political and cultural mythology of Spain. But the friends we consulted ahead of our journey all mentioned it as a site of extraordinary beauty, so we booked into the Hotel Gran Pelayo — which had excellent reviews on booking.com — thinking it would be nice to end our trip somewhere a bit special. It was only when we got here that we realised we had stepped into a kind of parallel universe, based in large part on a myth.

For Covadonga is a place of pilgrimage, and the first week of September happens to be the time that the faithful gather in great numbers to celebrate La Santina, the ‘Mother of Spain’, and to remember the warlike deeds of King Pelayo, who led the resistance to the Muslim invasion of the country that would one day be called Spain, regarded by some as the first step towards the reconquest and christianisation of the peninsular, which was completed over seven hundred years later, in 1492.

In the first week of September, visitors to Covadonga can witness the build-up to the celebration of  La Santina — and by implication, Pelayo’s victory over the ‘Moors’ — by attending daily mass and taking part in a variety of celebrations around a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and in the Basilica. The celebrations culminate on 8th September with Asturias Day, and a procession of dignitaries — the great and the good — from the Basilica to the Holy Cave, accompanied by bagpipes.

So, we turned up, unwittingly, for the last two days of these festivities before Asturias Day, which provided a glimpse into aspects of Spanish cultural life with which neither Mrs Blanco nor I were particularly familiar. Growing up as a Catholic, with an Andalusian mother, my spouse has a better grasp of what all this means than I do, but even she admits to feeling a dense pall of gloom descend around her when confronted by the more baroque manifestations of the faith. At the same time, neither of us are immune to the fallout from the collective religious experience — something like bewilderment, something like joy — being shared by the hundreds of believers we witness on Thursday night as they carry an effigy of the Virgin from the church to the shrine, a ritual that will be repeated with some variations, and greater pomp, tonight.

So who was Pelayo? According to legend, he was an Asturian warlord who led a successful counter-offensive against the Muslim invaders, around 722 AD. Immediately before his unexpected victory at the Battle of Monte Auseba, he experienced some kind of religious communion with the Virgin, in her shrine at Covadonga, and this — accord to believers — ensured him of victory against the ‘Enemies of the Cross’.

However, the entry in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica puts it more sceptically:

The stories and relics of Pelayo associated with the nearby shrine of Covadonga, the preserved site of the first major victory against the Moors (722), belong to legend rather than to fact; it was, however, in this legendary guise that he became an important symbol of Christian resistance in medieval Spanish history and literature.

As outsiders it is hard to penetrate to the essence of a myth that holds such a powerful response for so many. But there are aspects of this story that are perplexing.

Consider this, for example, taken from an article in the online review ctxt:

‘When Santiago Abascal [the leader of the extreme right party, Vox] studied for his High School Baccalaureate, in the early nineties, he learned in his history class that the Battle of Covadonga – the supposed origin of Christian Spain – was a myth with little factual basis: an ideological construction put at the service of political interests. Almost 30 years later, in April 2019, he stood under the statue of Don Pelayo (and in front of the cameras) to recite the hymn of the Virgin of Covadonga, celebrate El Cid and “the great work of Hispanidad” in America, vilify the “silent and shameful politicians” in the face of affronts to national prestige, and warn that his party would never ask for “forgiveness for the works of our forebears across the centuries” and to offer “a guide to resistance and normal values, based on common sense.”

Did Abascal forget what they taught him at school? It is more likely that he remembered the practical part of the lesson: there are few weapons more powerful than national history turned into myth. And even more so in a country like Spain, where an element within public opinion believes that there are powerful enemies determined to make Spaniards ashamed of being Spaniards.’

This is pretty scary stuff when one considers the role that Vox has in several regional constituencies; but the topic cannot to be avoided, when we remember what Covadonga stands for in the patriotic mind. The faithful, following the plaster and paint image of the Virgin on Thursday evening from the Basilica to the holy cave might not have been Vox supporters, but the idea of the homeland proclaimed in various spots around the place has a special resonance in a nationalist ideology. Which is not to say, of course, that all, or even most Spaniards feel this way — that would be absurd — but as so often, a myth can skew perceptions.

For example, on the way into the sacred cave, a marble plaque reminds us that the Holy Virgin is like a mother to the nation, and that this place is the cradle of Christian Spain. Below the cave, on a huge engraved block of granite, we find the words celebrating ‘the great victory of Pelayo and his Faithful over the Enemies of the Cross’. And who, we might ask, are the ‘Enemies of the Cross’ today? No doubt, Santiago Abascal and Vox provide an answer to that, pursuing, as they do, Islamophobic policies, and more specifically, of halting immigration, most especially of Muslims from the Maghreb.

“Europe is what it is thanks to Spain—thanks to our contribution, ever since the Middle Ages, of stopping the spread and the expansion of Islam,” claims Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, until very recently Vox’s spokesman on international relations.

In a statement issued yesterday, in advance of Asturias Day, Vox announced that its deputies would not attend the presentation of the Medals of Asturias at the Oviedo Auditorium at 6:30 p.m. “due to the politicisation that has affected the awards that should be the pride of our region and that now only serve for Adrián Barbón (President of the Asturian regional government) to reward his own kind.” 

However, the deputies affirm that they will attend all the Asturias Day events “that go hand in hand with Asturian and Spanish traditions, such as the Mass in the Basilica of Covadonga, followed by the procession to the Holy Cave accompanied by a band of pipers.”

By which time, as chance will have it, we will have moved on. Covadonga has been an education, and one which will no doubt furnish pleasant memories — which I will describe in another post — but it is also a place that resonates with a deeply troubling mythology, holding many Spaniards in its thrall.