Sotres, Exemplary Town of Asturias Award

The village of Sotres has been bestowed with the 2024 Exemplary Town of Asturias Award, as announced today in Oviedo by the Jury responsible for conferring said Award.

The Jury for the Award –convened for the thirty-fifth consecutive year by the Princess of Asturias Foundation– was chaired by Francisco Rodríguez García and composed of Nicanor Fernández Álvarez, Felipe Fernández García, María Fernanda Fernández Gutiérrez, Pablo García Esteban, Leticia González Menéndez, Francisco González Orejas, Juaco López Álvarez, Judith Naves Morán, Eva Pando Iglesias, Rosa Roces García, Trinidad Rodríguez Díez, Germán Romano Sobrino, Jorge Suárez Díaz, Daniel Suárez Sánchez, Consuelo Veiga García and Fernando Delgado Álvarez (acting secretary of the Jury).

Sotres is a locality in the Municipality of Cabrales located in the Picos de Europa National Park and Biosphere Reserve (UNESCO). At an altitude of 1050 metres, it one of the highest towns in Asturias. With one hundred and eight inhabitants, its economic activity is based on livestock and agriculture, tourism and agri-food businesses specialising in the production of Cabrales cheese. Sotres also receives numerous visitors associated with mountaineering activities, attracted by the beauty of the surrounding landscape and the emblematic peak known as Naranjo de Bulnes or Picu Uriellu, which was first scaled one hundred and twenty years ago this year (2024). Mining activity was important in the past, especially in the 19th century, when up to three hundred people worked in the mining of lead and zinc ore. The Royal Asturian Mining Company closed the last mine in 1978, leading to many workers emigrating.

The inhabitants of this village have managed to overcome the many vicissitudes of life in a high mountain village throughout their history: from being cut off for weeks due to the heavy snowfalls that fell years ago (such as the so-called “great snowfall” of 1888 in Cabrales) to being one of the last localities in Asturias to have electricity installed, in 1981, more than a hundred years after its invention. One of the village’s most recent achievements aimed at improving its quality of life has been the construction of avalanche barriers, which allow people to travel safely when it snows and prevent constant road closures in winter. One of the main characteristics of Sotres is sustainability, largely fostered by livestock grazing and related to the production of Cabrales cheese. Today, there are several young people (some of whom have returned after professional and educational experiences far from the village) who work herding cows, goats and sheep, whose surplus milk is used to make cheese, subsequently cured in the five caves that are still worked. There are two dairies in the village on the Cabrales cheese PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) register. One of these also has a Cabrales Cheese ‘Classroom’, which allows visitors to learn about the making of this product and its maturing in one of the traditional natural caves.

Created in 2006 with the aim of safeguarding the interests of its inhabitants and preserving their traditions and heritage, Sotres Neighbourhood Association has been remarkably active in recent years –especially encouraged by young people–, which has allowed it to grow from seventeen members initially to more than two hundred today, all extensively involved in its proposals. With its motto “The Heart of the Picos de Europa”, its most notable projects include the organization of the Sotres Cultural Fest, which has held exhibitions, concerts, workshops, as well as putting on plays and film screenings. All these cultural activities take place in the former schools, which have been renovated by the residents themselves after being closed for two decades. More recently, English and yoga classes have been imparted, which is a milestone for a population that is so geographically isolated and which usually does not have access to this type of educational and leisure offering. The protection of the environment has also led the association to recover old paths and trails that were in poor conditions, such as the Pandébano Path, the route from Collau Timón to La Caballar and the Sotres circular route, in addition to the construction of a scenic viewpoint at one end of the village. It has also organised sextaferias (community workdays) in which a large number of residents have participated and has made a commitment to digitalisation, with the creation in 2023 of social media profiles and a WhatsApp group for members.

Over the course of its yearly editions, the Exemplary Town of Asturias Award has become one of the Foundation’s well-received and broadest-reaching activities within the Principality, as it is intended to reward the “town, village, population centre, scenic area or group of people in the Principality of Asturias that has stood out in a notable way in defending and conserving its natural or environmental setting, its historical, cultural or artistic heritage, in initiatives for boosting the economy or in the carrying out of communal works or other such outstanding displays of solidarity”.

This Award was first bestowed in 1990, on the tenth anniversary of the Foundation, and is different in both nature and character to the Princess of Asturias Awards. It entails a financial endowment of forty thousand euros. It is presented each year by Their Majesties The King and Queen of Spain –accompanied by Their Royal Highnesses The Princess of Asturias and Infanta Sofía of Spain– the day after the Princess of Asturias Awards Ceremony, which is held in Oviedo in the second fortnight of October.

This year, a total of 29 candidatures were put forward for the Award.