Taramundi

Taramundi sits in the hills of western Asturias near the Galician border, and its craft is knives: navajas with handles of boxwood, walnut or horn, often inlaid, forged in small workshops that have operated here for centuries and which still sell directly. The village also preserves a complex of water-powered installations at Os Teixois and Mazonovo, where streams drive a forge hammer, a grain mill, a whetstone and a fulling mill, several restored and demonstrated. In the 1980s Taramundi became a case study in rural tourism development, one of the first Spanish villages to build an economy on it deliberately, which is why a settlement of a few hundred people has hotels and a museum network.

What you actually see

• The knife workshops - forges making inlaid navajas by hand.
• Os Teixois - a restored complex of water-driven forge, mill and whetstone.
• Mazonovo - a mill museum with a large collection of milling machinery.
• The rural tourism model - a village rebuilt around visitors from the 1980s.

When to go

April to June and September to November; western Asturias is wet and green, with rain likely in any month. Workshops keep working hours and demonstrations run at set times.

Honest expectations

Taramundi is remote, a long drive from Oviedo on winding roads. The village is small and the visit is spread across several separate ticketed sites. Knives are genuine craft work and priced accordingly.

Nearby

The Eo estuary and Ribadeo lie north; the Galician border is a few kilometres west.