Coats of Fresnedo

Fresnedo is the most complex and richest schematic cave station in Asturias and, like Peña Tú and Doma del Demo (Boal), one of the best examples of prehistoric schematism in the north of the Peninsula. In all three places, high and dominant sites were chosen, so that the very topography of the terrain reveals the importance of the graphic message that was communicated through such succinct and discreet art in its proportions.

The paintings were discovered in 1968 and are still visible today behind the protective metal mesh fences installed some years ago by the University of Oviedo.

Above the gorge of La Estrechura, the prehistoric station consists of five caves, more or less developed but all exposed to sunlight, open on the gorge between 650 and 850 metres above sea level, containing various pictorial representations (well over half a hundred figures identified) of so-called ''schematic art'' and attributable to the Bronze Age.

There are frequent representations of goats, which are very simple (a few paired strokes that allude to the legs or horns joined to another length corresponding to the animal's trunk). This is the case in the shelters of La Collantoria, La Cuesta`l Pasu and the Ganau shelter, listed from bottom to top as one ascends along the route of the station, almost always painted in red. The human figure is also repeated, sometimes expressed through very summary linear motifs.