Capital of the council of the same name, Tinéu is one of the great landmarks of the primitive Camino de Santiago, both for its long history linked to the Jacobean route and for the leading role played by this town in the rebirth of the Camino that began in the final decades of the twentieth century.

It has just under 4,000 inhabitants and sits on the side of a mountain formed by the Sierra de Tinéu and Grullomayor, at an average altitude of 673 meters.

Tinéu has traditionally been a neuralgic center of the Asturian southwest, settling in the town a medieval castle that contributed to the control of this territory by the crown. Similarly, a Franciscan monastery was established in Tinéu, of which the church survives, from the 13th century.

The connection with the Camino de Santiago is very relevant in Tinéu. In the thirteenth century it already had a pilgrims’ hospital, called Mater Christi, possessing a vast amount of properties throughout the council of Tinéu, to whose most illustrious neighbors the patronage of this institution belonged. The hospital was located on Calle Mayor, next to the García de Tinéu palace (today the House of Culture). At present there are still remains of its factory and the Chapel of Our Lady of Mater Christi, which maintained the cult until 1834, later being used as a theater, until its demolition in 1930. The hospital building was confiscated in 1799 and later, During the War of Independence, it would be used as a barracks, which accelerated the ruin of the building, already evident in the first decades of the 19th century, which determined the disappearance of the building.