Three almost forgotten cemeteries in Asturias and the possible reason for a well-known legend

As is the case with some rural areas of Galicia, the mountains of Asturias have been gradually depopulating for decades.

An exploration of the Bunkers of Ranón and the Moorish Cemetery of Barcia, in Asturias
Two houses swallowed up by nature in the domains of the mythical Asturian busgoso

This depopulation has led many small mountain villages to become ghost towns, and this also affects their burial sites, as there are no one to care for them. In some cases, the inhabitants of these villages emigrated to other parts of Spain or other countries, and both the villages and their ancestors' cemeteries were forgotten.

This Tuesday, the always interesting YouTube channel Hilux Aventura (I recommend subscribing) published a video touring three of these cemeteries. The first two are Catholic cemeteries (the second is in the town hall of Proaza), while the third is a Muslim cemetery, Barcia, which as you may remember we already saw in December 2023 in a video by Aventuras Entresierras (the video is in Spanish but has English subtitles; you can activate them in the bottom bar of the player):

You can see some screenshots from the video here, as a preview, and some notes. This is the first cemetery visited by Hilux Aventura in this video (its gate is the one shown in the image at the top of this article). The author of the video doesn't indicate its location. It's the most neglected of the three cemeteries, with a lot of weeds inside and most of the graves in very poor condition. What we see here is the cemetery's very high stone wall, a surprising construction, especially considering it's in the middle of a mountain. Imagine how hard it must have been to bring all those stones there.

Here we see the gate to the second cemetery in the video, located in Proaza. It's also clearly abandoned, but at least the city council has cleared its interior.

Here we see the gate of the Barcia Moorish Cemetery, with a beautiful Mudejar-style arch, characteristic of Muslim architecture in Spain. The graves here are marked, in some cases, with slate sheets, but most of them don't even have any object to indicate that someone is buried there. This cemetery was built in 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, to bury more than 400 Muslim soldiers from the Nationalist side, part of the indigenous troops brought from the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco.

I've left this image of the path that leads to the second cemetery in the video for last, located in the middle of the mountain. I think it perfectly illustrates the possible reason for a well-known legend common to Galicia and Asturias: the Santa Compaña, known in Asturias as Güestia. It's one of the most famous myths in northern Spain: a procession of souls that traveled along rural roads at night. Imagine this path in the dark, in the cold, fog, or rain, with no other lights than the lantern or torch that the walker carried. Walking along rural roads at night is how we best understand the origin of this legend.

It is said that the Asturian Güestia walks the roads crying out: "Andad de día, que la noche es mía" (Walk by day, because the night is mine). Whether you have a lot of imagination or not, I recommend that you be cautious if you walk at night in the mountains, so as not to have the bad luck of running into this macabre procession (I am Galician and obviously I do not believe in these things... but they happen).