Fernando Alonso, Formula One’s youngest double world champion and the man who saw off Michael Schumacher, is made of stern stuff. If you arrive in his home town of Oviedo, in the rugged hills of Asturias, the principality on Spain’s unspoilt northern coast, you quickly see where that quality comes from.

This is not the overdeveloped picture postcard Spain of the Costas or the baking plains of Madrid, but the Spanish version of Wales, a relatively poor region where mining was the main employment for generations.

The place is honest, rough and ready, and surprisingly attractive with a proud history featuring great hardship during the Spanish Civil War and the infamous miners’ revolt that preceded it.

Asturians have had few heroes to shout about over the past 1,000 years – they still refer back to the daring deeds of the great Visigoth leader, Pelayo, in 718 – and so they are particularly proud of Alonso, their homegrown Formula One superstar.

This is the man who, against what must have been massive odds, emerged from a modest urban upbringing in this forgotten corner of Spain to conquer the motor racing world.

As one of the locals put it yesterday, Alonso’s personality fits closely with that of Asturias and Oviedo, for whom he is a reluctant standard-bearer. He is quiet, shy, genuine as the day is long and a nononsense professional sportsman who does what he is paid to do and puts his back into it. With Alonso, there is rarely any sign of the arrogance or preciousness that often afflicts drivers in Formula One.

The 25-year-old who started racing a go-kart in the wooded hills on the edge of this city when he was at primary school is facing new challenges, one of them unexpected. Having moved in the close season from Renault to McLaren Mercedes, he always knew that he had a battle on his hands to recapture the form he showed with the French team. He also knew that he would be facing a tough fight with Ferrari in the shape of either Felipe Massa, of Brazil, or Kimi Raikkonen, of Finland.

What he did not expect was to be preparing for his “home” grand prix in Barcelona this weekend, which he would dearly love to win in front of a sell-out 140,000-strong crowd, with the danger that he could be upstaged by his teammate, and a rookie at that.

“Upstaged” is possibly too gentle a term for what would happen if Lewis Hamilton, the Briton, beats Alonso in a fair fight at the Circuit de Catalunya on Sunday. “Humiliation” might be a more appropriate adjective for an outcome that could permanently and sensationally shift the balance of power between the two men.

In Oviedo there is a sort of unofficial “Alonso tour” you can do that helps to bring him to life in a city he rarely visits from his homes in Britain and Switzerland for fear of the mayhem he causes when he is spotted on the streets. There is his favourite restaurant, the Punto Y Coma, where Alonso used to like to pop in for a slice of his beloved Spanish ham. There is the Auditorio PrÍncipe Felipe, where hundreds of his faithful gather to watch races, and there is the Plaza de America, where his fans gather under the fountains after his victories to celebrate long into the night.

All over town his pale, almost ghostly image is visible on giant hoardings or cardboard cut-outs staring out from advertisements for banks and insurance companies.

In the local papers you could not miss Alonso yesterday as the provincial government proudly announced the go-ahead for a new karting track to be opened in 2009 that will be supported by the Fernando Alonso Foundation and named after the man many here believe will become one of the all-time greats of the sport.

“At the speed of Alonso” was the headline on the front page of the Voice of Asturias, which published a detailed graphic of facilities that will be in another world compared with the modest circuit at La Belga, where Alonso trained as a boy.

You get the feeling that Alonso is loved by his countrymen. They admire the way he has risen to the top of one of the toughest sports and has done so without the sort of help accorded to Hamilton, for example.

Mostly they also understand his shyness and the way, as one local put it, he has “never given his private life away”. Some mistake this for aloofness, even arrogance, but most see it for what it is – a rare quality in a sporting world obsessed with money, fame and celebrity.

What you cannot know without coming here is how closely people identify their hero with Asturias past and present. Asturians define themselves as much by their provincial heritage as they do by their Spanish nationality and so any symbol of what makes them unique is especially cherished.

There is an accident of commercial history that has made the link between Alonso and his people particularly strong: the branding on his Renault for two years was the same light blue and yellow that is found on the Asturian flag, a neat synchronicity rudely disrupted by his switch to the silver and black of McLaren.

José Soto, the owner of Punto Y Coma, recalled Alonso being aware of the power of this symbolism months ago. “Before anybody knew McLaren wanted him, he held a meeting at a venue nearby and said that even if at some time in the future he did not wear the blue colours, Asturias would still be in his heart,” Soto said, sitting at a table in the back room. “We are still nostalgic about this because we don’t see the blue on his car any more.”

The view in Oviedo is that Alonso’s experience, particularly his battles with Schumacher, will stand him in good stead, not only against Hamilton but also in his struggles with Ferrari. Most do not see him being upstaged, humiliated or just plain beaten by Hamilton this weekend and, even if he is, they see him coming back even stronger in future races.

“There is no shame in being beaten by a teammate like Hamilton, who has proved his worth,” Soto said. “If it happens it will serve as an important inspiration for Fernando to improve.”

Elias Fernández, the secretary of the Oviedo F1 Club that is sending 1,800 of the local faithful to the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday, is happy with Alonso’s performance this season. “He’s doing great,” he said while sorting out itineraries for his members at a local travel agent. “Changing teams is always a problem, so we expected the performance wouldn’t be so good, but even McLaren must be surprised by the success Fernando has had.

“There is some certainty that McLaren or Ferrari will win on Sunday, but, within the team, we hope it will be Fernando not Hamilton. Hamilton is the luckiest rookie in history – he is good, he is very good, but he’s got the best car and this is the first time this has ever happened to a rookie. What we have seen so far is just the beginning. We will see what happens once the championship is over.”

Taking his mid-morning snack at Punto Y Coma, Fernando Montes, a retired miner and a fervent Alonso fan, took a similarly robust view. “If there are no mechanical mistakes, Fernando is still better than Hamilton,” he said. “In any kind of sport, when you compete at this level, you have to go step by step. Hamilton is good – he may become excellent – but I think he is still too young. Remember Alonso has defeated Schumacher twice – he faced him twice and became world champion.”

At the Plaza de America, Juan Ramos Sanchez, the proprietor of the Ristorante del Arco, is hoping for another big celebration at the fountain this weekend. “When the race is run and he has won, people come into the square,” he said. “They sing for Alonso, they shout ‘Alonso, Alonso’ and they wear the blue T-shirts. They sing, they take off their shirts and go into the fountain.

“It usually takes an hour and a half, but when he won the championship last year it lasted into the early hours of the morning. The only problem are the flowers around the fountain which, after the celebrations, are usually completely flattened.”

The idols of the Spanish mainstream

Fernando Alonso

He may be rich and famous (in fact, the best paid Spanish sportsman), but that has not stopped the country feeling proud of its prodigal son, the first one to break into the most competitive of sports – and one that Spain had traditionally struggled in. His second crown in Formula One turned him into a social phenomenon as much as a sporting achiever. Never before had the country witnessed with so much enthusiasm the birth of a great champion.

Rafael Nadal

In Spain, any successful player is popular with the hundreds of thousands of fans who follow tennis. But Nadal has done something else – he has introduced a new generation of fans who had considered the sport boring. It is not only his sporting conquests, it is more to do with the vigour of his battles, the apotheosis of his fights. With him, we are not watching a match, but a heroic dispute that sometimes requires talent and other times almost inhuman effort. To Spaniards, he does not only play tennis, he performs miracles.

Pau Gasol

Since the silver medal won at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984, basketball has been the second sport for Spaniards. Winning the recent World Cup is probably the country’s best victory in team sport, but the success of Gasol in the NBA is the proudest achievement. A Spaniard becoming revered in Memphis, the city of Elvis Presley, being chosen to play All-Star games and hogging headlines in the NBA has made him extremely popular.

Gemma Mengual

It is rare to find women among the most popular sports figures in Spain, but it is difficult to ignore what Mengual did in the recent World Championships in Melbourne (and during her successful career spanning 11 years), where she returned to Spain with six medals in synchronised swimming. At 29, she is the most successful sportswoman in the country’s history and her name belongs to that select list that includes Virgine Dedieu and Anastasia Ermakova.

Iker Casillas

What makes Casillas special is that he transcends football clubs. He called himself the Galáctico of Mostoles, a modest district of Madrid, where he was born, making fun of the tag and insisting that he was a man of the streets who happened to be playing for Real Madrid and Spain. He was in school when a Real coach came looking for him to travel to Norway for a Champions League match. He sat on the bench and the next season he was the goalkeeper of Real. Since then, he has not put a wrong foot on or off the pitch – the perfect professional.

— Words by Guillem Ballague

— Oviedo is the captial of the Asturias region on the north coast of Spain

— Population about 200,000

— Local football team is Real Oviedo, who play in Segunda División B. Stan Collymore’s six weeks with the club in 2001 drove him into retirement

— The city’s cathedral claims to have one of Judas’s 30 pieces of silver

— Sidra, is the favoured local drink. Surprisingly for Spain, it is cider

— Looking for local music while frequenting Oviedo’s cider bars (sidrerìas)? Don’t expect flamenco. Bagpipes get the Asturians rocking