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Updated: May 13, 2025
In days not so very long past the streets were filled with picturesque costumes of the provinces, with gaily decorated mules and donkeys carrying immense loads of hay or straw, or huge nets filled with melons or pumpkins, almost hiding everything but the head and the feet of the animal; or a smart-looking "Jacket" man from the country districts would go whistling by, Asturians, Murcians, Gallegos, gypsies, toreros in their brilliant traje Andaluz always to be recognised by their tiny pigtails of hair, and by their splendidly lithe and graceful carriage all these jostling, singing, chaffing each other, while the jingling bells on innumerable horses, mules, donkeys, rang through the sunlit air, and made the Puerta de Sol and the streets branching from it a constant scene of life and gaiety.
They came from very far; some there were who had marched more than a month to reach Saguntum, and they pointed out the Lusitanians, athletic of figure, of whom horrible tales of ferocity were told; the Galicians, who lived on fish and by washing and melting the gold of their rivers; the Asturians, who worked in iron; and the gloomy Basques whose language other nations could not understand.
He thinks that when the evil had been done, and a French prince was reigning at the Escurial, England and Holland were justified in attempting, not merely to strip Spain of its remote dependencies, but to conquer Spain itself; that they were justified in attempting to put, not merely the passive Flemings and Italians, but the reluctant Castilians and Asturians, under the dominion of a stranger.
This hero, whose invincible daring roused the Asturians and Cantabrians to struggle for liberty, laid the foundations of that powerful monarchy whose warriors afterward pursued the Moors even to the rocks of the Atlas.
Although they lie so close together, Asturias differs widely from its sister province both in the character of its people and its scenery. The Romans took two hundred years to subdue it, and the Moors never obtained a footing there. The Asturians are a hardy, independent race, proud of giving the title to the heir-apparent of the Spanish throne.
The Romans sought gradually to reduce to subjection the interior corresponding nearly to the two Castiles, which they comprehended under the general name of Celtiberia, while they were content with checking the incursions of the inhabitants of the western provinces, more especially those of the Lusitanians in the modern Portugal and the Spanish Estremadura, into the Roman territory; with the tribes on the north coast, the Callaecians, Asturians, and Cantabrians, they did not as yet come into contact at all.
I have nothing to say against the Asturians, save that they are close and penurious whilst at service; but they are not thieves, neither at home nor abroad, and though we must have our wits about us in their country, I have heard we may travel from one end of it to the other without the slightest fear of being either robbed or ill treated, which is not the case in Galicia, where we were always in danger of having our throats cut."
In the Notitia, which was not compiled until the beginning of the fifth century, the second ala of the Asturians is given as the garrison of Cilurnum.
"There is a storm travelling through the air," said a peasant, whom we overtook, mounted on a wretched mule; "and the Asturians had better be on the lookout, for it is speeding in their direction."
VI. Then King Don Sancho gathered together a great host, Castillians and Leonese, and they of Navarre and Biscay, Asturians, and men of Aragon and of the border. And he sent Alvar Fanez, the cousin of the Cid, to King Don Garcia, to bid him yield up his kingdom, and if he refused to do this to defy him on his part.
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