The Brañas of Somiedo: A journey into the heart of the Asturian mountains

The brañas are an essential element of the landscape of Somiedo Natural Park in Asturias. These mountain pastoral communities, with their teito huts and green meadows, were for centuries the temporary home of shepherds and livestock farmers during the summer months.

The term braña refers to both the group of buildings and the surrounding pastures where cattle graze together and freely. In Somiedo you can find a significant number of well-preserved brañas with their teito huts intact.

The broom-thatched teito huts are rectangular or square-plan structures with a vegetable roof. They were built from locally available materials: stone for the walls, beech wood for the frame holding the roof, and broom for the four-pitched, steeply-angled covering that allows rainwater to run off. The broom thatch is renewed annually, by hand, between late September and early October, by driving new broom over the old, adding thickness and improving waterproofing.

These buildings have two floors: in the past the ground floor served as a cowshed and as the shepherd's home during the spring and autumn months, while the upper floor was used to store hay.

Today they are used as shelter for livestock. In some huts at La Pornacal, a small stone-tiled outbuilding used by the brañeiro — the casetu — can still be seen on the sides.

Some of the Brañas of Somiedo