Feast of Our Lady of Guidance

One of the most striking features of the Festivity of the Virgen de Guía in Llanes is that it exudes antiquity and seafaring tradition on all four sides.

The Ermita de Guía is five hundred years old, and there has been news of this devotion in the fishing village of Llanes for as many years. And another curious fact is that its festivity coincides with that of the Virgin of Covadonga - patron saint of Asturias - on 8 September. But the Virgin Guide does not detract from the importance of Cuadonga/Covadonga, on the contrary, it reinforces the sense of Llanes and eastern identity in Asturias as a whole.

But the curiosities of this festival do not end here. Another of the most colourful and artistic is the night-time procession held on 7 September, in which the Virgin is taken from her hermitage to the Basilica in Llanis, with a stop overlooking the sea, fireworks, and hundreds of women dressed in Spanish mantillas, some in white and some in black, each carrying a candle in her hand and a tuberose in her lapel (this fragrant white flower is the distinctive feature of the Bando de la Virgen de Guía). Making rows, and accompanying the Virgin through the narrow streets of the old town of Llanes, they make up a unique and different picture to anything you might find at a ceremony of this kind.

The list of curiosities is completed with the Danza de Arcos on the morning of the 8th of September in front of the Chapel, which the children perform with special grace, while the adults are dressed in the costume of llanisco and llanisca, and there are hundreds of them.

In addition, for the last four decades, a wooden train has been arriving from Mieres with hundreds of people who join in this celebration where the jet of the llanisca costume dazzles more than the sun's rays.