Parees Fest 2026 Adds Three New Murals to Oviedo

Three new murals have been added to the streets of Oviedo as part of Parees Fest 2026. The latest works have been created by artists Maite Rosende, Greta von Richthofen and Mar Herrera. All adding to the growing collection of public art across the Asturian capital.

The festival returned to Oviedo between following a year’s hiatus. As with previous editions, the new murals look beyond simply decorating the city. Instead they tend to draw on local history, traditions and the stories of the people who live there.

Parees has been creating murals in Oviedo since 2017. Its approach is based around what it describes as contextualized and site-specific muralism. Artists research their own subjects and work alongside local communities before creating their pieces.

Parees Fest 2026 Artists

This year’s artists bring very different approaches to muralism. Maite Rosende is from Donostia and combines illustration with large-scale painting. Greta von Richthofen works between mural painting and graphic novels, while Mar Herrera brings a background in figurative painting to her first large-scale mural intervention.

Maite Rosende

Reinterpreting La Cometa

San Sebastián artist Maite Rosende created a colourful new interpretation of the historic La Cometa mural. Her work for Parees also extends into a nearby tunnel Transforming what had previously been a relatively grey passage into something much more colourful.

Rosende approaches mural painting from a background in illustration. Describing art as a playground without boundaries between different media. Her visual work has received recognition including the Etxepare Award in 2024 and the Euskadi Illustration Award in 2025. Her illustrations have also appeared internationally, including at the Biennial of Illustration Bratislava and the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.

For this mural she deliberately avoided working from a completely finished sketch. Instead, the composition developed directly on the wall, allowing the different elements to emerge and be improvised as the work progressed.

The approach was particularly visible in the tunnel, where the reaction of people passing through became part of the experience of the mural.

Greta von Richthofen

La sacavera d’Uviéu

For her Parees mural, Greta von Richthofen turned her attention to one of Oviedo’s lesser-known residents.

La sacavera d’Uviéu is a salamander endemic to the city which lives around walls and gardens. Richthofen’s mural depicts an encounter with the creature, with the salamander emerging between floor tiles. The composition also references the famous lithograph Reptiles by M. C. Escher.

The artist’s work often explores public space and community, creating large-scale murals in both urban and rural settings. Her work has taken her to countries including India, Romania, Switzerland, Mexico, France, Germany and Spain.

For the Parees project, the subject was researched with the help of David Álvarez, a professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oviedo. The result is a mural which brings attention to a creature that is part of the local environment but might otherwise easily go unnoticed.

Mar Herrera

Memories of the Teatinos Neighbourhood

The third new mural comes from Mar Herrera, and looks back to the industrial and popular history of Oviedo’s Teatinos neighbourhood.

It is Herrera’s first large-scale mural intervention and was developed through a community-led mediation project involving Raposu Roxu and Yetooponese. The process explored the industrial and folk memory of the neighbourhood, with local residents sharing their stories and recollections.

The resulting mural takes us back to the 1970s and the Feria de la Ascensión, or Ascension Fair. The fair was once held at the old slaughterhouse in the neighbourhood and provided an important gathering point for local people.

Rather than depicting the area simply as it looks today, Herrera has captured a fleeting moment from its past. The stories and anecdotes shared by residents during the project became an important part of the mural’s development, allowing some of those memories to remain visible on the wall.

Herrera comes to mural painting from a background in figurative art. Originally trained in Veterinary Medicine, she subsequently undertook extensive artistic training and has recently been selected for a number of national painting competitions, including the Nicanor Piñole Painting Competition in 2026.

Street Art in Oviedo

The new works join a collection of more than 40 contributors whose murals have been created in Oviedo since the festival began in 2017. Parees describes itself as one of the festivals specifically focused on contextualized and site-specific muralism, combining contemporary art with social research and artistic mediation.

The approach has become one of the defining features of the festival. Previous editions have brought artists from Asturias, elsewhere in Spain and internationally to the city. Their murals often reflecting local traditions, history and community stories. This has given Oviedo an unusually varied collection of murals with a strong connection to the place in which they have been painted.

Map of the Murals of Oviedo

For more Inspiring City articles you will like, take a look at…

• The Street Art and Murals of Oviedo
• Five new murals in Spain for 3rd Edition of Parees Fest
• Parees Festival returns for 6th Edition