Village
Langreo, Llangréu in Asturian, is a concejo and city of Asturias, the heart of the Nalón coal basin, with about 38,600 inhabitants distributed mainly between La Felguera and Sama; it was one of the country's most important industrial centres and today forms part of a large metropolitan area of eighteen concejos, the seventh largest in Spain by population. The Fábrica de La Felguera came to be the largest steelworks in Spain, and the Langreo railway ran through here, the third line on the peninsula; the María Luisa pit closed in 2016. The río Nalón crosses the concejo, on whose banks its main settlements sit, and toward the south the land rises to nearly 1000 metres, within the Protected Landscape of the Mining Basins of Asturias.
Monument
A church of Romanesque origin in the parish of Ciaño, in the council of Langreo, which retains two doorways from its original fabric, the main one, at the foot of the church, and the south one, possibly dated to the late 12th or early 13th century; the rest is an early 20th-century neo-Romanesque historicist restoration. The western doorway, the one of greatest artistic value, has a round arch with three archivolts decorated with zigzag motifs and birds' beaks, resting on six columns with capitals depicting plant motifs and human scenes, including the martyrdom of Saint Stephen. The south doorway, slightly pointed, rests on small columns with capitals of confronted birds and sirens; both are linked to the Romanesque workshop of Villaviciosa.
Monument
Built in the 17th century over an earlier Romanesque church, on a height at Ciaño commanding the whole valley. Legend tells that the Virgin appeared over an oak at that spot; its pilgrimage festival on 8 September is a Festival of Regional Tourist Interest.
Monument
A neo-Romanesque church beside the Dolores Duro park in La Felguera, Langreo, on the site of a hermitage from 1604 dedicated to Saint Eulalia of Mérida, which became too small with the arrival of the steel industry around 1850. The church that replaced it in the 19th century was burned down in the October Revolution of 1934 and blown up during the Civil War, along with a marble mausoleum of the Duro family. Rebuilt from 1941 according to the historicist design of Francisco de Zuvillaga, financed by Duro Felguera, it was reopened in 1954. It is one of the largest neo-Romanesque churches in Asturias, and Magín Berenguer blended pre-Romanesque Asturian and Byzantine elements in its decoration. The change of dedication from Saint Eulalia to Saint Peter, patron saint of La Felguera since 1908, was made official in 1971.
Monument
A coal mining operation in Ciaño, Langreo, active since 1858 through the María Luisa adit worked by the Unión Hullera de Santa Ana, a French-owned company, and deepened into a shaft in 1918, not reaching full output until 1942. It closed on 31 December 2016, the last mine in Langreo to do so. A firedamp explosion that killed seventeen miners in the 1940s led to the song «Santa Bárbara Bendita» being adapted with new lyrics, «En el pozo María Luisa», now the best known version. In 1976 King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía went down into the mine dressed as miners, a visit later repeated by President Adolfo Suárez. The exterior preserves two buildings from the 1920s, of crenellated red brick, the loading pavilion, the headframe and a mine entrance from 1897, today a chapel.
Monument
Pozo Fondón is located beside the Nalón river, in Sama de Langreo, where the La Nalona mountain mine had already been opened in 1840. Duro Felguera deepened the shaft in 1905, making it the second vertical mining shaft opened in Asturias; in fact it is two shafts, Fondón I, 483 metres deep, and Fondón II, 378 metres deep. During the postwar period it housed a penal colony, closed at the end of 1958, and its extraction activity ceased in 1995. Buildings such as the 1915 engine house and the mid-20th-century loading pavilions, with mining mosaics by Luis Suco-Sánchez, are preserved. Today it houses Hunosa's historical archive, is the headquarters of the Central Mine Rescue Brigade and, since 2022, has had a geothermal station.
Monument
Opened in 2006 in the former facilities of the Fábrica de La Felguera, the first integrated steelworks built in Spain, founded in the mid-19th century by the La Rioja-born businessman Pedro Duro, creator of the company Duro Felguera, which went on to become the country's most important steelmaking centre. Its reception building occupies a 45-metre-high cooling tower, refurbished to tell the history of Asturian steel through original machines, tools and documents, and the everyday life of the workers and their families. The museum also holds a collection of locomotives and steam cranes from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, and devotes a space to the history of aspirin, linked to the Bayer plant established in the municipality.
Nature
One of the first public parks in Asturias, in La Felguera (Langreo), known as the parque Viejo (Old Park). It grew out of the gardens of the church of Santa Eulalia, laid out in 1891, and was extended in 1917 through the patronage of the future marquesses of La Felguera, Dolores Fernández Duro and Antonio Velázquez-Duro, when the food market was demolished to open up the central promenade. With that extension the bandstand was built, an Art Nouveau structure and the largest in Asturias, along with five cast-iron lampposts about seven metres tall, made at the Fábrica de La Felguera; its cast-iron fountains and benches also date from around 1919, which have earned it a place in the Principality's Cultural Inventory. Since 1915 it has held the statue of Pedro Duro, brought from the factory. It was born in the warmth of the steel industry that shaped the neighbourhood.
Nature
At 1,011 metres it is the greatest height in the municipality, at the southern end of the district, where the summits are around a thousand metres alongside Pico Cogollín and Picu les Cruces. That whole upper strip is included in the protected landscape of the Cuencas Mineras.
Curiosity
At this Bayer plant, located in Lada on the other side of the Nalón river but known as the La Felguera Plant, one hundred percent of the German company's worldwide acetylsalicylic acid has been produced since 2013, as confirmed by the company itself. It was founded in 1942 as PROQUISA, to make use of gas from the Duro Felguera blast furnaces, producing crude benzol, phenol and acetic acid and anhydride; in 1952 it began manufacturing acetylsalicylic acid, with barely 90 tonnes a year, the first time the active ingredient of aspirin was made in Spain, although encapsulation was done in Barcelona. Bayer bought Proquisa in 1969 and integrated it in the 1980s. Despite the end of the steel industry in that same decade, the plant has been modernised and remains active, one of the last major factories in the council.
Curiosity
The Ferrocarril de Langreo, officially the Compañía del Ferro-carril de Langreo en Asturias, built the Gijón-Langreo line in the 19th century, the fourth steam-hauled line on the Iberian Peninsula and the first of an industrial nature, dedicated to carrying coal from the mines of Langreo and Siero to the port of Gijón, in addition to passengers. A decade earlier, the Carretera Carbonera had been opened for the same purpose. The company, which went on to become the oldest in the world still in operation, was dissolved in 1972 and merged into Feve; today the line, 49 kilometres long, metre-gauge and fully electrified, belongs to Adif, and the C-5 Gijón-Laviana and C-5a Gijón-Oviedo suburban services run on it.
Monument
Opened on 15 June 2013 around the San Luis shaft in Ciaño, deepened between 1928 and 1930 by Carbones de La Nueva and declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection); it remained in operation until 1969, when Hunosa stopped working it, and its definitive closure came in 2002. The visit is made by mining train from El Cadavíu station, which runs across the valley on the surface — between spoil heaps and the Trechora mine entrance, in the Protected Landscape of the Mining Basins — and goes underground through the Emilia adit to the first level of the shaft, thirty-two metres below ground, on the longest underground railway route inside a real mine in Spain; the shaft reaches 420 metres spread over six levels, and visitors return to the surface by lift.
Monument
Dedicated to the patroness of the municipality, it preserves a medieval core enlarged in the 18th century on a height overlooking the valley; its September pilgrimage festival is the greatest devotional gathering in the Nalón basin.
Monument
Neo-Gothic parish church of Sama, in Langreo, built around 1880 amid the town's mining and industrial growth, on the initiative of Antonio María Dorado, local political boss and mayor of Langreo. Enlarged from 1893 in neo-Gothic style by the architect Nicolás García Rivero, inspired by the basilica of Covadonga, the nineteenth-century church was damaged in the October 1934 revolution and left in ruins during the 1936 Civil War, with dispute over whether this was the work of workers' committees or the bombing by the Condor Legion. It was rebuilt after the war under the architect Francisco Somolinos and consecrated to Santiago, whose procession passes through Sama every 25 July; its façade shows a porch of three pointed arches between two spired towers inspired by Oviedo Cathedral.
Activity
A gastronomic contest from Langreo devoted to the most representative dish of Asturian cuisine, declared a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Regional (official Spanish tourism-interest distinction, at regional level); for several days the concejo's restaurants compete for the valley's best fabada. It is held every December in La Felguera since 1980, when it was born as a tribute to fabada and as an economic boost for local hospitality, coinciding with the closure of much of the area's industrial activity; it has continued uninterrupted except in 2020. The days open with a proclamation and the presentation of the Pota de Oro, and its central event, the provincial fabada contest, brings together professional and amateur restaurants. Declared a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Regional (official Spanish tourism-interest distinction, at regional level) in 2020, the 2021 edition ran for ten days with cultural and musical activities.
Monument
One of the three historic bridges that cross the Nalón on its passage through Sama: it was built in 1895 and shares the riverbed with the Puente Viejo, of 1865, and that of La Maquinilla, of about 1890, witnesses in iron and ashlar to industrial Langreo.
Historical milestone
The valley received its charter of settlement in 1338, although it is cited much earlier: in 857 Ordoño I donated several of its churches to the cathedral of Oviedo. In 1874 a Carlist band burned the town hall and with it the municipal archive.