When I was a child, I loved riding my bicycle. I had a little blue Orbea that could take me to every corner of my village in the blink of an eye, giving me an enormous sense of freedom. Some days, when the whole group of friends got together, we would set off on small adventures beyond the village, discovering places that would otherwise have been completely out of reach. On those outings, the moment we looked forward to most came after a long climb, when at last the road would open into a long downhill stretch that allowed us to enjoy a few glorious minutes of effortless speed. Those were truly magical moments of childhood.
Inevitably, those memories came flooding back the first time I travelled the road between the Leitariegos ski resort, near Villablino, and the town of Cangas del Narcea. After descending for kilometre after kilometre without encountering more than the occasional incline, I found myself imagining how wonderfully enjoyable it would be to cycle that route, just as we used to when we were children. The journey, around thirty-four kilometres long, is almost entirely downhill and passes through a succession of spectacular mountain landscapes that invite quiet contemplation and the kind of mental escape we all need from time to time. Whether you make the descent by car or by bicycle, it is an experience well worth having.
As for its photographic potential, I have to admit that vast mountain landscapes are breathtaking when experienced in person, but they do not always translate equally well into a photograph, at least not when working with a small rangefinder camera fitted with a fixed 35 mm lens. Once the grand panoramas were behind me, however, just a few kilometres before reaching Cangas del Narcea, I came across a beautiful old building that immediately caught my attention and made me pull over to photograph it. Later, I discovered that it was the Palace of San Pedro de Arbás, a Renaissance building that today stands in a state of partial abandonment and disuse.
Whenever I come across buildings of this quality in such an obvious state of neglect, I cannot help questioning some of the values of our modern society. It is difficult to understand how, after the enormous human effort and financial resources that went into creating places like this, we now allow them to decay with barely a second thought, while committing ourselves to decades of mortgages for small, impersonal spaces in concrete apartment blocks. In a way, it feels as though we have diminished the value of our historical heritage while assigning disproportionate value to buildings that, from an architectural or cultural perspective, simply cannot compare. It is a paradox that, at least for those of us who enjoy photographing places like these, occasionally rewards us with a memorable image.
