Monuments

Praise of the Horizon

Eduardo Chillida Juantegui, 1990. Concrete. The Elogio del Horizonte is conceived from a small-format model, which has been "growing" until reaching 10 meters in height and weighing 500 tons. It is made of reinforced concrete, on the site itself, the Cerro de Santa Catalina, from two pillars that act as supports for an open ellipse. With its welcoming arms and its solid and, at the same time, light body, the Praise seems to want to fly away. Ship of airs and seas in which to travel with the imagination. Bare walls, cold only in appearance. The sky is the roof of this common house, inside which the music of the wind sounds. The Praise of the Horizon is also the praise of nature, on the promontory where twenty centuries ago a people put down roots and chose the limits of their home.

Location: Santa Catalina Hill

Monument to Pelayo

José María López Rodríguez, 1891. The sculpture represents Don Pelayo, founder of the Kingdom of Asturias and considered the initiator of the Reconquest. It is 2.80 meters tall and weighs four tons. According to José Antonio Samaniego Burgos, the sculpture was made with bronze cannons taken from the Moroccans during the Second Moroccan War (1859-1860). With his right hand, Pelayo holds the Victory Cross, which is the emblem of Asturias.

Location: Plazuela del Marqués

The Letronas

Juan Jareño, 2011. The most representative sculpture of the city. It was necessary to turn the Gijón brand into an autonomous element, looking for a large-scale volumetric solution. The work, a gift from the Federation of Metal and Related Companies (FEMETAL) to the city, was made of solid steel and various companies from this federation collaborated on it. It is currently a consolidated and beloved element in the city, known by the colloquial name of Las Letronas. Whoever passes through Gijón does not leave without a photo. Doing a job like this is a luxury that rarely comes your way.

Location: Poniente Marina

cider tree

Labaula arquitectos, 2013. On the occasion of the Natural Cider Festival, this monument was built with 2,300 bottles of cider. The objective of the work is to make society aware of the need to recycle.

Location: Poniente Marina

No title

Herminio Álvarez, 2001. Corten steel and stainless steel. It is a large piece, 12 metres, in which Herminio once again expresses his concern for weightless balance. It is a geometric piece based on an apparently impossible balance. The force of gravity is balanced with the magnetic force producing a work in tension. In this piece there is a harmonious balance between the reference to a constructive order and a certain organic resonance.

Location: El Rinconín Park

Solidarity

Pepe Noja, 1999. Stainless steel. Pure forms of knotted cylinders. This is how this sculpture, which has the vocation of symbol, is explained from the most material point of view. Made of stainless steel, it weighs three and a half tons and is made up of four cylindrical shapes in the form of interlocking links. A chain that means union, but also freedom, because the links of that chain are open, they do not lose their independence, their formal autonomy. In Solidaridad, stainless steel, hard against the elements, becomes soft and moldable in appearance, with a shiny finish. Solidarity seems to retain the light and expel it to the four winds.

Location: El Rinconín Park

light shadows

Fernando Alba, 1998. Corten steel. Shadows of Light is a set made up of four monumental rectangular plates, made of Corten steel and about five meters high, arranged in a vertical position and oriented to each of the cardinal points. Each plate has been perforated in circles of different diameters, through which light penetrates and shadows are recreated. A game from which to contemplate the maritime façade, or a piece of it, depending on the magical window to which we approach. When the sun plunges into the Bay of Biscay at sunset, the Sombras de Luz plates take on the color of the star, as if they had just come out of the blast furnace, and project their luminosity through the holes with clear, almost tubed profiles. Spotlights that warn: the show begins.

Location: Mayán de Tierra, Casablanca.

Germinating Landscape

Miguel Ángel Lombardy, 1997. Bronze. It opens to any reading. A being of magma, a space satellite about to rise, a dilapidated and injured dinosaur, a cyclops that sees the sea through its only eye... Sculpture on a pedestal, very elaborate without seeming so, almost three meters high and located on green area in the shade of the large prow-viewpoint of the Parque de la Providencia. A sculpture that allows to be touched. From a short distance, the Landscape offers unsuspected details and its shapeless arms give it the appearance of a weather vane and compass.

Location: Cabo de San Lorenzo Park

Northeast

Joaquín Vaquero Turcios, 1994. Corten steel. It is four meters high by five meters wide and is an unequivocal sign of the link between Gijón/Xixón -the city-, the sea -the Cantabrian Sea-, and industry, the engine of development throughout the 20th century. Northeast is a stele, a mural. In its structure, smooth surfaces alternate with other superimposed, irregular ones. The steel is perforated, perhaps to allow the wind to have fun in it, when the light collaborates, the Northeast seems outlined against the sky and the sea. And there is the steel rusted by the passage of time, reddish and hard, drunk with saltpeter and a companion to seagulls that come to perch on its backs.

Location: Ascent to Cerro Santa Catalina

Genesis

Joaquín Rubio Camín, 1992. Concrete. The title gives the necessary clues to understand this sculptural group of three pieces, six, four and two meters high, respectively, which form an abstract and very harmonious composition, of great constructive rigor. The concrete used is gray in color and has a smooth texture, raised above the grass and integrated into the environment. The garden is part of the sculpture, as is the sound of the water that glides in the nearby fountain or the bustle of the afternoon. Génesis is born every day at that hour of meeting in Gijón.

Location: Paseo de Begoña

World Peace Monument

Manuel Arenas, 1990. Concrete and iron. The Monument to World Peace is a sculpture made of white concrete and an iron accessory that weighs twenty tons. Its five modules make up two well-differentiated structures that intersect perpendicularly and stand on a circular platform that represents the Earth. The modules are supported and joined by iron cylinders. The five meet at a meeting point, the central axis of the sculpture, a place for communication.

Location: Lauredal Park

Tower of the Jove-Hevia and Chapel of San Lorenzo

This Baroque ensemble made up of a chapel, a tower and a rear body for residence was built at the end of the 17th century, forming part of the Baroque expansion that expanded the center of Cimavilla towards the old Bajovilla neighbourhood, whose occupation began in the 16th century. The chapel of San Lorenzo, built in 1668, is reminiscent of that of Our Lady of Guadalupe, with a semicircular arch doorway topped by a broken curved pediment and a belfry decorated with pinnacles and balls. The tower, square and with a crenellated finish, emulates medieval constructions and uses ashlar as a decorative element, as well as baroque moldings that suggest broken ears.

Location: 4 Cabrales street

Saint Lawrence Chapel

This Exhibition Hall is located in an area bathed by the waters of San Lorenzo beach: The Chapel of San Lorenzo de Tierra, as opposed to that of San Lorenzo del Mar that stands on top of Providencia. It is made of sandstone ashlars. The doorway has a semicircular arch sheltered under a curved cut pediment. The façade culminates in a belfry decorated with pinnacles of pyramids and balls. It has an inscription with the date of 1668. This art room is open all year round to all artists who want to exhibit their works of painting, photography, crafts, ceramics, sculpture or others. It is also offered for any other type of cultural activities.

Location: 4 Cabrales street

Walker

Miquel Navarro, 1999. Aluminum. Andarín is a figure three meters high, on a pedestal, made of aluminum. It is the set of the union of parallelepiped, cylinder and pyramid geometric elements, which result in a schematic human profile, stylized and light, and with such basic shapes that it looks like a toy. El Andarín by Miquel Navarro is abstract, but it does not lose its image of movement. Everything in it is geometry, but this does not mean that it loses its anthropomorphic meaning. After all, what is man if not geometry?

Location: Arbeyal road 12

Climbing Sculpture

Pablo Maojo, 1992. Steel and paint. Escalada is made up of several vertical pieces of sheet steel, welded together and coming from the steel company Aceralia. Its link with the Sports Pavilion goes far beyond mere symbolism. Those eleven meters of height that the visitor "scales" with his eyes correspond to the height of the interior pillars of the building, and the red color of the monolith is identical to that of the stands of the center court. Climbing is like a great mountain where the light is reflected and breaks into a thousand sparkles. One of its sides is carved with saw teeth, handholds towards the summit, marks on the long ascent...

Location: Paseo Doctor Fleming, next to the Palacio de Deportes de La Guía

In memory – Na memoria

María Jesús Rodríguez, 2000. Iron and paint. En la Memoria-Na Memoria is a sculptural group made up of two pieces, small black monoliths a little over two meters high and irregular in shape. They are made of cast iron and installed in the middle of a small pond, in the good company of reeds and surface aquatic plants. They are apparently worn totems, like immobile fossils. Vegetables made of stone and furrowed by a thousand cracks. At its base, a bed of rounded pebbles, a world of transparencies within the reach of the walker.

Location: Europe Square

Sculpture Homage to the children of war

Vincent Moreira. Opening date: December 17, 2005. Reminder of the exile of the so-called "children of war" (civil war, 1936-1939), one of the great tragedies of recent Spanish history. With it, the city of Gijón wants to perpetuate the memory of the 1,100 children who, from its port of El Musel, and defying the blockade that the battleship Cervera carried out on the city, left on September 23, 1937 bound for the then Soviet city of Leningrad (Saint Petersburg, since 1992), being evacuated to Stalin's USSR, in the company of their teachers and educators, by the Government of the Spanish Republic through the Council of Asturias and León, before the advance of Franco's troops in the front of the Spanish North. It is a life-size bronze sculpture.

Location: Arbeyal Beach Promenade

Cube Sculpture

Alejandro Mieres Bustillo, 1995. Glass and light. The Cube by Alejandro Mieres is a central element of an entire space designed by the author. A luminous cube that regularly changes color at night is part of the sculpture, the most striking, but not the only one. In front of the glass cube, the stands, also conceived as an urban sculpture. If we observe those steps from the heights, we will verify that Mieres recreated in them the grooves of his paintings, his geometric language. The design of this space is completed with the artistic pavement of its pedestrian areas, made by the artist Bernardo Sanjurjo. Wavy stripes of different colors that contrast with the gray of the ground.

Location: Wetland Square

west chimney

This chimney is a vestige of the industrial activity that took place on the land occupied by the Cantabrian Shipyards. In the heat of the activity of the port, auxiliary shipbuilding companies were located in it; among them, numerous timber factories. The chimney, known as the “Basurto Chimney” because it is located next to a glass company of the same name, belonged to the Compañía de Maderas de Demetrio Fernández Castrillón, a factory documented since at least 1876 that had a forge and a mechanical workshop for sawing and molding

Location: Paseo de la Playa de Poniente

Tribute to Galileo Galilei XV

Amadeo Gabino, 1997. Corten steel. Galileo Galilei would look for signs of heaven on the rough surface of the Homage. The sculptural ensemble, about three meters high, is made up of two semicircular geometric structures, made of corten steel and placed obliquely. Each of these two structures is made up of plates joined by welding, which curve and arch, and draw concentric routes on this map that defines a thousand planets of the cosmos of dreams.

Location: Cabo de San Lorenzo Park

Obelisk

Joaquín Rubio Camín, 1992. Concrete. Sculpture made up of nineteen identical cubic blocks, one on top of the other, pointing in all directions, like an old vertical map of routes, at a road junction. Obelisk is 14 m high and resembles a ladder that leads to nowhere, or perhaps to all. Moving staircase, rotating on a main axis that converts the concrete into a light, almost volatile material.

Location: Avenida de la Constitución