Logbook · 4 places

What to see and do in Sabero

What to see and do in Sabero (La Montaña de Riaño, León): 4 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Nature · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Sabero

Ironworks of San Blas 350 m

Towns near Sabero

What to see in Cistierna 4.2 km · 4 places
What to see in La Ercina 6.1 km · 3 places
What to see in Crémenes 7.4 km · 4 places
What to see in Prado de la Guzpeña 12 km · 3 places
What to see in Reyero 13 km · 2 places
What to see in Boñar 14 km · 4 places
What to see in Vegaquemada 15 km · 2 places
What to see in Cebanico 16 km · 2 places

Spain › Castile and León › León › La Montaña de Riaño › Sabero

What to see and do in Sabero

Sabero
Village
Sabero is a municipality in the province of León whose name, formerly Villa Sancti Petri after San Pedro, patron of its parish, became Castilianised over time. In Antiquity it was the seat of the military stronghold of Vadinia, and in the Middle Ages the castle of Aguilar rose here, a site for royal hunts mentioned in Alfonso XI's Libro de la Montería and the scene of a famous siege by Diego López de Haro, resisted by its warden, Marcos Gutiérrez. Coal extraction by the company Hulleras de Sabero y Anexas continued until 1992, and the Vegamediana coal-washing plant remained active until 1998. Its San Blas ironworks, neo-Gothic and dating from 1847, housed the first working blast furnaces on the peninsula and is today the Museo de la Siderurgia y la Minería. It has 1,020 inhabitants.
Ironworks of San Blas
Monument
Neo-Gothic building erected in 1847 to house the valley's ironworks; its cathedral-like nave is now home to the Museo de la Siderurgia y la Minería de Castilla y León, opened in July 2008. Built by the Sociedad Palentino-Leonesa de Minas, it was among the first coke blast furnaces in Spain, earlier than those of Trubia and Mieres, and was active between 1847 and 1862, when it closed due to tariff reform; its iron reached León, Palencia, Valladolid and Madrid. In 1880 the mines passed into Basque ownership, giving rise in 1892 to Hulleras de Sabero, which resumed operations thanks to the La Robla-Valmaseda railway, by then oriented towards the Bilbao steel market. The process combined the reduction of ore in coke blast furnaces with refining by puddling and trip hammer.
The first blast furnaces of the peninsula
Historical milestone
In 1847 the San Blas ironworks housed the first blast furnaces to come into operation on the Iberian peninsula, a pioneering attempt at modern iron and steel making that soon died out for lack of transport infrastructure.
Cave of Valdelajo
Nature
Discovered in 1999, it holds flowstone, stalactites of every size, draperies, columns and aragonite crystallisations in a municipality that coal mining had hollowed out in another way.