Located in the south of the Principality of Asturias, on the border with Galicia, and surrounded by extraordinarily green landscapes, Santa Eulalia de Oscos stands as the Capital of Rural Tourism of 2024. This is the first time in the eight editions of this unique contest promoted by Escapadarural that the Internet users who participated in the vote – around 80,000 – elevate an Asturian town as their favorite Spanish destination away from the big city.
Santa Eulalia de Oscos, with barely 450 inhabitants, takes over from Campo Lameiro, known as the capital of Galician rock art and one of the corners with the highest concentration of petroglyphs in Europe. The brand new capital has prevailed over nine other finalists among more than 200 candidates from towns of less than ten thousand inhabitants spread throughout the country.
He is accompanied on the podium this year by Altura, a municipality located between the Palancia Valley and the Sierra Calderona, in the province of Castellón, and Cabezuela del Valle, in the Jerte Valley, in the province of Cáceres. They are followed by Peñafiel (Valladolid); Brihuega (Guadalajara); Enciso (La Rioja) and Cómpeta (Málaga). Closing this particular classification are Artajona (Navarra), Sant Hilari Sacalm (Girona), and Vilaflor de Chasna (Santa Cruz de Tenerife).
Located in the Oscos, a region dotted with small villages, meadows, forests of oaks, chestnuts and birches, and crossed by a thousand and one streams, Santa Eulalia de Oscos welcomes the stranger after driving along a winding road. Despite its small population – it has barely 450 inhabitants – it serves as the tourist capital of the area on its own merits.
This tiny town of stone houses and slate roofs with wooden windows and balconies, where Eonaviego is still spoken, is a true showcase of traditional crafts. This is the case of the “ferreiros” in the Ethnographic Complex of Mazonovo, which shows what the local iron industry was like since time immemorial, or the wooden loom of Irene Villar, which recovers the traditional technique with wool, cotton, silk or linen. .
It is worth visiting the birthplace of Antonio Raimundo Ibáñez, Marquis of Sargadelos, an aristocrat who founded one of the first cast iron and earthenware foundries in Spain in Lugo. Nor can we overlook the Hyottoko knife store, authentic handcrafted pieces that have been manufactured in the town for more than a century.
Santa Eulalia de Oscos is also a paradise for hiking lovers. In these lands, declared a Biosphere Reserve, the mountain routes are endless. The Seimeira stands out, a perfectly signposted and extremely beautiful path, with a waterfall with a drop of more than 30 meters, which crosses riverside forests, chestnut trees and oaks. During the route, which lasts about four kilometers round trip, we find the ruins of the village of Ancadeira.
The objective of the Escapadarural initiative is to give visibility to small towns that are committed to the development of sustainable rural tourism and offer travelers interesting and quality proposals for nature getaways. The municipalities awarded in previous editions are Campo Lameiro (Pontevedra), in 2023; Cazorla (Jaén), in 2022; Olvera (Cádiz), in 2021; Potes and Santillana del Mar (Cantabria), in 2020 and 2019, respectively; Aínsa (Huesca), in 2018, and Sigüenza (Guadalajara), in 2017.