Echoes Above El Mazucu

Echoes Above El Mazucu

by David Eugene Perry / Photos by Alfredo Casuso

Part of a continuing exploration of off-the-beaten-path Spain by Alfredo and David, including research for the forthcoming novel, Thorns of the 15 Roses, sequel to Upon This Rock.

⸻

14 October 2025: We left Llanes at 8:30 a.m., climbing gradually through the folds of the Sierra del Cuera. A cool morning mist softened the landscape without obscuring it, revealing flashes of green valleys and grazing cattle between the switchbacks. By mid-morning, we reached the high point of Los Resquilones, a viewpoint and pass overlooking the valley of El Mazucu and, beyond it, the faint silver of the Cantabrian Sea.

Photo: The trident of the Second Republic crowns Los Resquilones, overlooking El Mazucu and the distant Cantabrian Sea.

There stands a striking trident-shaped memorial: three steel arcs painted in the colors of the Second Republic — red, yellow, and violet — rising from a concrete base.

Its plaque reads:

A los luchadores antifascistas
A los milicianos caídos en Asturias

“Aunque el otoño de la historia
cubra vuestras tumbas
con el aparente polvo del olvido,
no renunciaremos jamás
ni a la más vieja de vuestras ilusiones.”
— Miguel Hernández

To the antifascist fighters
To the fallen militiamen of Asturias

“Though the autumn of history
may cover your graves
with the apparent dust of oblivion,
we shall never renounce
even the oldest of your dreams.”

Just next to it, the cracked remnants of a Franco-era memorial to Nazi Germany’s Condor Legion, erected in the 1940s in tribute to Hitler’s airmen who lent their support to the Spanish dictator. A frequent target for graffiti, it was finally dismantled in 2016, forty-one years after Franco’s death.

Both monuments have their nativity in the Battle of El Mazucu (6 – 22 September 1937). It was here, in this same high terrain, that one of the fiercest episodes of Spain’s northern campaign of the Civil War unfolded. Fewer than 5,000 Republican defenders — those loyal to Spain’s democratically elected government — held these passes against roughly 33,000 Nationalist troops, backed by artillery and aerial bombardment from the German Condor Legion.

For over two weeks, dense fog and steep terrain favored the defenders. The fighting was close, personal, and unrelenting. But when supplies ran out and the bombardment intensified, the Republican line finally broke. Though the Nationalists took the position, their advance into eastern Asturias was slowed by weeks — a delay earned through extraordinary resistance.

Locally, the engagement is still remembered as “La Termópilas española” — the Spanish Thermopylae — a name that captures both the courage and the inevitability of the fight. As a Virginian, I’m very aware that the miasma of our own civil war still casts a long shadow 160 years on. Here in Spain, there are still people alive who remember, fought, and endured their own fratricidal horror. The wounds are still fresh.

The Ayuntamiento de Llanes and the association FAMYR (Federación Asturiana Memoria y República) continue to commemorate the defenders of El Mazucu and have petitioned to designate the site a Lugar de Memoria Democrática.

Above El Mazucu, the Sierra del Cuera is alive with quiet motion. The hillsides are a patchwork of heather, gorse, and bracken, the ground damp and aromatic after the morning mist. Ferns spill down the rock faces, and moss creeps along stone walls where birch, chestnut, and beech trees cling to the slopes.

From the air come the cries of buzzards and ravens, and sometimes the sharp call of a peregrine falcon diving across the ridge. Foxes, martens, and roe deer keep to the forest edge, rarely seen but often signaled by tracks in the mud.

Sheep and cattle graze the high meadows — clinging like furry gymnasts to the perilous heights — unbothered by us as we pass. A more glorious and tranquil hike we’ve never had. Asturias continues to entrance.

The nearby village of El Mazucu still bears quiet signs of that past. The Capilla del Ángel de la Guarda stands near its entrance, its bell reportedly forged from the nose of an old aerial bomb — a small but potent emblem of transformation from war to peace.

Here we stopped briefly at Bar Roxin, the hamlet’s lone tavern and a gathering place for locals, hikers, and cyclists. My vermut was tinted with sidra, and Alfredo’s beer was cold. We drank in the atmosphere of, perhaps, the most remote watering hole at which we’d raised a glass.

Not far down the road, a rock-face shrine appeared almost by surprise — a small alcove carved into the limestone, containing crosses, flowers, and candle stubs. Spain is replete with such as this: an ermita rupestre popular — informal devotional oratories rather than registered chapels. A cool spring, moss-lined, gurgled below the cave.

From there, the road winds down toward La Huera de Meré and La Puentenueva, crossing territory marked by the wooden signs of the Parque de las Cavernas del Oriente de Asturias — the so-called Cavemen’s Route. We passed its mapboard and trailheads, knowing we’d return another day to explore the prehistoric caves of El Pindal, Tito Bustillo, and El Buxu.

The municipality promotes more than twenty filming locations across the region, including works such as The Orphanage (2007), Los jinetes del alba, and several films by Gonzalo Suárez. It’s easy to see why directors are drawn. “Atmospheric” doesn’t do justice to the word, or the landscape.

By 12:30 p.m., we were back in Llanes. The mist had lifted; the sea lay calm. In four hours we had moved from port to peak, from war memorials to wayside shrines — a landscape dense with history and memory.