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way to thrive. But it hasn’t changed the nature of the place. Spain
entertained more than 80 million visitors last year, enough to
overrun many of its best known places. Barcelona has become
a set piece, far from the raucous port town it used to be. Madrid
seems like an international shopping mall.
Asturias, however, remains regional, strong flavored, authen-
tic. Menus in English are hard to find in Oviedo, and until recently
they were all but absent elsewhere in the region. José Andrés—the
Asturian-born, Washington, D.C.-based chef who has become a
global sensation—wants to open a restaurant not far from where
he lived as a child. If he does, I’m betting it won’t have an English
menu either.
ASTURIAS’S TWO LARGEST CITIES are polar opposites. Oviedo,
like many inland cities, tends to be insular, conservative, overtly
polite, and socially inaccessible. Gijón is a port town, working-
class and occasionally profane, but open to the sea and new ideas.
Oviedo has an opera house and a full program to fill it. Gijón prefers
its series of avant-garde festivals. I’m pleased that one of those
festivals, Jazz Xixón, is under way at the Teatro Jovellanos when
I arrive. I buy a ticket to see the Portico Quartet, an experimental
band that was nominated for Britain’s Mercury Prize; other head-
liners will include the playful Spanish group El Viaje del Swing
(The Journey of Swing). It’s easy to spot the blazing neon sign
for Teatro Jovellanos, mounted high above the pedestrian mall
of Paseo Begoña. Inaugurated in 1899, the theater was renovated
shortly after the fall of ruler Francisco Franco in 1975 and bought
by Gijón in 1995. It has served as a cultural centerpiece since.
I find Tonio Criado, the festival’s director, standing in the lobby
underneath an enormous crystal chandelier. Criado grew up in a
small inland town near Cangas de Onís before moving to Gijón.
Now he wouldn’t live anywhere else.
“It’s the youngest city in the region, and the freshest,” he
says. “You find that in our music, our cuisine, and our way of
life.” When I ask him whether he feels more Spanish or Asturian,
he doesn’t hesitate. “Oh, Asturian,” he says. “But really, I amWhitewashed houses huddle in the fishing village of Cudillero, a stop on the famed Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route. At right, traditionally attired
musicians in Oviedo ready to serenade a wedding couple with the gaita asturiana, a bagpipe native to Asturias that’s been played since the Middle Ages.