Grado
Camino Primitivo
With close to 10,000 inhabitants the city of Grado is the first opportunity to stock up on supplies since leaving the capital. There is a tourist information office in the park at the start of town and several grocery stores throughout the town. If you would like to stop and look around (or shop) cut through the park towards the more pedestrian streets to your left. Along this route you will pass near the Capilla de los Dolores and the Iglesia Parroquial de San Pedro.
Beware guidebooks which erroneously place the Villapañada albergue in Grado, when it is in fact 3.5 km outside of town.
There is a traditional market held every Wednesday and Sunday.
Los Indianos. In the late 19th century, during a period of great poverty, a great many Gallegos, Asturianos, Cantabrians, and Basques emigrated to Central and South America; their proximity to the sea enabled them to travel more readily. A great many left but only a few struck it rich, and when they returned they turned their fortunes to the task of building large manor homes, and to securing titles. Many of the houses still remain and those in Asturias are the finest examples. They are sometimes colonial in style, and always eclectic with palm trees as a tribute to their tropical lives in the Americas. These Indianos as they were called (the Americas were referred to as the Indios) also repaid their fortune by financing public works projects, and throughout Asturias the benefactors were responsible for bringing to their birth villages a level or modernization rarely seen elsewhere in Spain.
Leave Grado along the main road (N-634). You will pass the 18th century Fuente de Arriba, from which the people of Grado drew their water before the installation of running water, on your right. Shortly beyond a cruceiro (stone cross) on your left the camino turns left and begins climbing, first on a concrete road and then on a gravel path.
The camino emerges onto the road, turns right, and passes over a newly constructed roadway. It then passes through the hamlets of Cascayal and El Valle (a place with no buildings whatsoever, but which does have a dumpster). At the next road junction is the turn to San Juan de Villapañada.
Accommodation in Grado
| Albergue de peregrinos Villa de Grado Donativo€ 16 |
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| Albergue La Quintana 15€ 32 |
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