Asturias

Gijón's city beach, a broad crescent of sand under six storeys of promenade, with the church of San Pedro closing one end. Schools work the mid-tide peaks and half the town seems to paddle out after work in September. The tidal range is the one rule: at high tide the sand all but disappears against the sea wall, so here you plan around the tide before anything else.

A long open beach with one of the oldest surf cultures in Spain: boards have been ridden here since the sixties, and the longboard festival that grew out of it made Salinas a name every Spanish surfer knows. The peaks spread from the town end toward San Juan with room for everyone, learners in the whitewater, loggers trimming the outside. The airport is just behind, so this can be your first session within an hour of landing.

A wide sandy horseshoe beside the Galician border, with dunes behind, a big rock parked in the middle of the bay, and gentle rollers that let a first-timer stand up without drama. Families and foam boards share the inside all summer, and there is space to spare even then. If the day looks small everywhere else, it looks perfect here.

A big open beach at the mouth of the Bedón river, with the Sierra del Cuera stacked up behind and not much else around. It faces the open Atlantic and picks up everything going, so the peaks carry real push even on modest forecasts. On a midweek morning in October you can share a kilometer of sandbars with three people and a heron.

A long, protected natural beach you reach on foot over the dunes, with quality sandbars and no promenade in sight. It is one of the most consistent waves in eastern Asturias, organized enough to reward a good rail game and quiet enough that the loudest thing is the shorebreak. Bring everything you need down the track; the nearest café is back in Vega village.

A quieter cove framed by dark cliffs west of Luarca, down a lane through the fields. When a west swell lights up, clean peaks stand along the sand and the odds are the only spectators will be gulls. This is the reward for driving past everything with a name; check it, and if it is not working, Tapia is half an hour on.

The west's surf town: a compact beach tucked under the village, with punchy peaks that have hosted contests since the sixties, when two Australian brothers wintered here and left their boards behind. Tapia has the schools, the board shops and the bars with surf photos on the walls, the closest thing this end of the coast has to a capital. The wave is quick and honest, and the walk from the square to the peak takes three minutes.

The jewel of Asturias: a hollow, sand-bottomed left that peels off the training walls of the Villaviciosa rivermouth when a solid northwest swell meets the lower half of the tide, eucalyptus and pines right behind the sand. On its day it is Spain's other great rivermouth left, the one that gets mentioned in the same breath as Mundaka. Be honest with yourself about how often that day comes, and do not expect to be alone when it does; when Rodiles is really on, everyone in the north knows.