Free camping in Asturias

Asturias is small, steep and green, and almost everything about traveling here follows from the fact that the mountains come almost to the sea.

The Picos de Europa rise sharply in the east of the region, close enough to the sea that you can see them from it, which gives Asturias a coastline of cliffs and short sandy coves rather than long beaches, and an interior of deep valleys running north to south. Oviedo records 960mm of rain a year and a July average maximum of 22.8C on AEMET’s 1981 to 2010 reference period. This is the wet, cool, Atlantic Spain, and the cider, the cheese and the dairy farming all come from the same weather.

For anyone in a motorhome the practical shape is this. The valleys are where the stopovers are, the roads into the high country are narrow, and the region is compact enough that a bad choice costs you half an hour rather than a day.

What the áreas are actually like

Small, municipal, and attached to something the town already owns: the sports ground, the swimming pool, the feria field. The best-documented ones give you everything you need in a paragraph.

Grado publishes the most complete page in the region. Its área is on the Avenida de los Deportes next to the municipal police and the sports facilities, with 8 bays, free, open all year, 72 hours maximum, a drain for grey and black water and a drinking water point. Restaurants, a fuel station and shops are inside 500m, and the centre of the villa about 1km away.

Mieres is the other one to copy. 6 bays, free, 48 hours, drinking water and both discharges, on Calle Asturias 300m from the Parque Jovellanos and 400m from the railway station. The council also states the rule plainly: you may park elsewhere in town where parking is allowed, but overnight stays are authorized only at the área.

Corvera put its área on a 660 square meter plot by the Overo roundabout facing the Trasona reservoir. 10 bays, free, 72 hours, a service platform with water and waste disposal, and, unusually for Asturias, electrical outlets. Trucks, caravans and cars are excluded, and nothing may be set outside the vehicle.

Nava gives 9 bays at Gamonéu with a 72 hour limit, and states that the stay, the water and the waste points are all free, with a small supermarket next door. Villaviciosa gives 8 bays free with the shortest published limit in the region, 24 hours, and adds a bike rack and a bike repair station.

Tineo publishes two. Two bays in the villa itself next to the pilgrims’ hostel, free, 48 hours, with the sensible note that when they are full you may use the recinto ferial instead. And 15 bays at Navelgas with drinking water and both discharges.

Teverga’s área at Entrago is the outlier worth knowing about. It is a recreational area that takes motorhomes rather than a dedicated área, so no bays are reserved for them, but it is the only one in the region whose council lists showers and toilets alongside the water and waste points.

What is mapped here

20 áreas across 17 concejos, and every one was read on the ayuntamiento’s own page. There is no regional list behind this, because Asturias does not keep one: the Principado publishes no áreas dataset at all, and the good regional directory that does exist belongs to a state-owned marketing company whose terms do not let a site like this one reuse it.

So this is 78 councils publishing 78 different ways, and the unevenness is what you plan around. Where a field is blank on a page here, that town published nothing, and the page says what to do instead. Where this comes from

Four áreas worth knowing about that are not pinned

These are real and the council publishes them, and none can go on a map honestly because neither the town nor any open layer gives a coordinate. Look them up by name when you are nearby.

• Llanes runs the largest área in the region at La Talá, 86 bays with a 48 hour limit, water and waste disposal. It is the only public overnight space in the whole concejo and Llanes enforces that hard: pernocta anywhere else is a very serious infraction at 500 euros. A municipal fee ordinance exists, so expect to pay. The amount is not published anywhere we could reach, so bring coins.
• Tapia de Casariego is the one clearly priced área in Asturias: 9 euros a day from 1 July to 31 August, 7 euros the rest of the year, plus 2 euros for the service point. A new ordinance took effect on 11 October 2025.
• Noreña lists an área on Avda. de Gijón and publishes nothing else about it.
• Salas confirms an área through the employment scheme that landscaped it, and publishes nothing that locates it.

Where the councils regulate but do not say where

Ten concejos have a motorhome ordinance and no locatable área: Avilés, Castrillón, Carreño, Morcín, Siero, Santo Adriano, Navia, Coaña, Oviedo and Langreo. Two are worth naming. Castrillón’s ordinance says the áreas are listed in an Anexo, and the Anexo is missing from the published document. Gijón announced a 45 space área at L’Arbeyal in 2023 and has published nothing since to say it opened, so do not drive there expecting it.

The pattern is consistent enough to plan around: in Asturias the ordenanza tells you the rules and the sign tells you the place.

Seasonality

Summer is the season, and it is a mild one. Oviedo’s 22.8C July average maximum is the reason Asturias fills with Spanish holidaymakers in August while the interior of the country bakes. If you are routing a summer trip around Spain, the north coast is the part that works in July and the meseta is the part that does not.

It rains all year, and the mountains make their own weather. 960mm at Oviedo is a coastal figure, and the valleys running up into the Picos are wetter. Low cloud sits on the high ground for days at a time, and a forecast for Gijón tells you very little about what is happening at 1,000 meters 30km inland.

Winter is mild on the coast and serious in the mountains. A January average maximum of 12.0C at Oviedo is comfortable by northern European standards, and it has nothing to do with conditions on a Picos pass in the same week. Mountain roads close with snow, and no Asturian área publishes an opening season, so a village water tap in a high valley may be off in January with nothing published to warn you. Fill up on the coast before you climb.

Late spring and early autumn are the best trade. May, June and September give you working services, open mountain roads, long daylight and none of the August crowding on a coast that has limited parking to begin with.

Coastal parking is the pinch point in August. Asturias has short beaches, steep access roads and small car parks, and the summer pressure on them is real. The mountain áreas inland are 30 minutes away and rarely full.

The rules here

Read the Spain country page first, for the distinction every Spanish argument about motorhomes runs on: estacionar, parking, which is traffic law, against acampar, camping, which the comunidades autónomas and the towns regulate.

Asturias went further than most. Decreto 61/2022 regulates campamentos de turismo and áreas especiales de acogida de autocaravanas en tránsito, which makes an área a defined class of tourism facility in Asturian law rather than just a car park a town happens to run.

What that does not do is give you a place to park. Each concejo’s ordenanza municipal still governs its own streets, and the Asturian councils use that power actively. Use the área where a town has one, keep everything inside the vehicle, and where a posted sign or the ayuntamiento’s current word differs from this page, they are right and this page is out of date.

Where to go next

• Spain: the country page for estacionar against acampar and who sets which rule.
• Castile and León, the other Spanish region mapped here, and a completely different kind of country.
• What is an aire, the French term most English-speaking travelers arrive with, and how it maps onto the Spanish área.
• Free camping in Europe for where the Atlantic north of Spain sits against the rest of the continent.
• The Spain map for Asturias and Castile and León together.