October 8th, afternoon.

Our second stop enroute to the Picos de Europa was Aviles, a small industrial town with a modern art gallery, a ‘gift’ from the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer.

His super-modern curvilinear design was surrounded by a refinery spewing burning gas, a busy port and other heavy industry.

The gallery has sometimes been called a White Elephant — it certainly is both white and large. With all that industry going on I have to wonder how long all those white surfaces are going to stay white!
From the town proper we crossed an artfully rusted bridge, ending up in a broad empty plaza with Niemeyer’s oddly-shaped buildings scattered around us.
The empty plazas and café. The interior housed two separate art galleries and was spectacular.
There were two very interesting exhibitions and with free admission on Wednesdays, we splurged and went to them both! The first was Isabel Muñoz’s semi-surreal portraits of people.
The second show was Op Art by one of its premier artists, Carlos Cruz-Diez.
Back out on the plaza a lone bicyclist checks his phone, backdropped by one of the better views of this industrial city.
A sculpture on the plaza.

• More on Avilés, a little town trying to live up to its big art reputation.
• More on our October 2014 trip to Spain.