Guieldu returns to the Cachu Fest in Trabáu

Degaña

Back to Trabáu for a festival edition dedicated to Rosa Cunqueira.

In our small region of Asturias, between the Cantabri­an Sea and the moun­tains, geog­ra­phy has always shaped the way its ter­ri­to­ries have lived and devel­oped. South-west­ern Asturias is a more moun­tain­ous, inland area that was his­tor­i­cal­ly rel­a­tive­ly iso­lat­ed, help­ing to pre­serve a rich oral tra­di­tion and many ele­ments of its cul­tur­al her­itage. It is in this set­ting that Rosa Cun­queira and her fam­i­ly chose to remain in their small vil­lage of Tra­báu, invest­ing in rur­al tourism, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and tra­di­tion­al crafts, while defend­ing a cul­tur­al her­itage they saw, along­side the land­scape and nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment, as one of the territory’s great­est treasures.

The Cachu Fest was born in 2023 through the col­lec­tive efforts of La Guar­i­da del Cun­queiro and Espa­cio Tor­ma­leo, dri­ven by a group of peo­ple con­vinced that south-west­ern Asturias deserved a cul­tur­al gath­er­ing of its own. Among them, Rosa Cun­queira played a par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant role. The dri­ving force behind La Guar­i­da del Cun­queiro and Asturias’ Rur­al Woman of the Year in 2022, she devot­ed much of her ener­gy to keep­ing the tra­di­tions of the area alive — its crafts, its lan­guage and its col­lec­tive mem­o­ry — and ensur­ing they were passed on.

At Guiel­du, we were for­tu­nate to be part of that first edi­tion and to wit­ness the ener­gy Rosa was able to bring to those around her. That is why, when news reached us a few weeks lat­er of the trag­ic acci­dent that would claim her life sev­er­al months after­wards, we felt her loss very deeply.

Her son Vítor took up the torch and has con­tin­ued, with the same deter­mi­na­tion he learned at home, the work of bring­ing life and val­ue to his home­land. And so, in Sep­tem­ber 2025, a new edi­tion of the Cachu Fest took place — not sim­ply as a con­tin­u­a­tion, but also as a trib­ute to a woman who had done so much for the cul­ture of south-west­ern Asturias. To be invit­ed back to take part was a gen­uine hon­our for us.

On Sat­ur­day, we shared the stage with some excel­lent bands. The trio Picarós opened the evening at nine, fol­lowed by our friends BREO, and then De Ninghures took the stage before us. What began as a con­cert line-up grad­u­al­ly turned, as the night went on, into some­thing clos­er to a shared cel­e­bra­tion. More than once, musi­cians from bands that had already played — or were still wait­ing to go on — joined the audi­ence to dance and applaud, break­ing down that invis­i­ble line that nor­mal­ly sep­a­rates the stage from the dance floor. San­ti Galguera also helped keep the ener­gy high. Ear­li­er that after­noon, he had led tra­di­tion­al Asturi­an dance work­shops and lat­er had the chance to put those lessons into practice.

Guiel­du were sched­uled to go on at 1:30 in the morn­ing, but a series of set­backs kept push­ing the timetable back, and we did not take the stage until three. Far from tak­ing the edge off the night, the atmos­phere remained as strong as ever.

By that hour, our enthu­si­asm was still intact, fuelled by the atmos­phere cre­at­ed by the bands before us and by the response of the audi­ence. In Tra­báu, at that point in the night, there was no longer any real dis­tinc­tion between those play­ing and those danc­ing: it had all become one shared cel­e­bra­tion, a way of hon­our­ing what Rosa had spent so many years defending.

Thanks to the col­lec­tive effort Rosa helped set in motion, Tra­báu remains a small but remark­able cul­tur­al hub in south-west­ern Asturias. And once again, music helped keep her name alive.

Vídeo y Fotos del Concierto

© Fotos: Éire Comunicación