Village
San Martín del Rey Aurelio, in Asturian Samartín del Rei Aurelio, is a concejo of the Principality of Asturias located in the Nalón comarca, which crosses its territory from southeast to northwest. It owes its name to King Aurelio I, under whose rule it was the capital of the Asturian kingdom in the 8th century; it became an independent municipality again in the 19th century, when five parishes broke away from Langreo in 1837, and in September 2007 its three main towns, Sotrondio, El Entrego and Blimea, merged administratively into a single city. It now has about 15,500 inhabitants. The upper part of the concejo lies within the Protected Landscape of the Mining Basins of Asturias. The Sotón pit, now open to visitors, and the MUMI museum sum up a century and a half of coal mining in the comarca.
Monument
The Pozo Sotón, between El Entrego and Sotrondio, in San Martín del Rey Aurelio, began to be sunk in 1918 by Duro Felguera to supply the blast furnaces of La Felguera, and the complex was completed in 1921. It is the only one in the Nalón basin to retain two headframes, joined by the «réter», a large iron structure in a style akin to that of the Eiffel Tower, dating from the 1920s. It remained active until its closure in 2014, the year it was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), and today it houses the mining experience and memory centre, with a gallery open to visitors and a memorial to the workers who died. In 1962, during the great Asturian miners' strike, Carlos Hugo de Borbón worked there under a false name until he was discovered and arrested.
Monument
Chapel of the parish of San Martín, near the village of Sotrondio, built on a Romanesque church of which corbels with geometric carving survive under the roof; after several renovations it is today a single-nave church, with two round-arched portals in ashlar and a two-bay bell-wall above the main door. Inside is venerated a carving of the Cristo del Socorro, to which tradition attributes eight centuries of age. Beneath an arcosolium in the left wall it holds a tomb that tradition attributes to King Aurelio, although the chronicles disagree on the actual place of his burial; it is said that during the Revolution of 1934 the tomb was opened and found empty. Tradition places the king's palace in the nearby paraje of La Varaosa.
Monument
An 18th-century manor house at Carrocera whose grounds are completed by a granary and a small chapel dedicated to Santo Domingo. It is one of the best examples of rural seigneurial architecture preserved in a municipality transformed by coal mining.
Nature
A ridge running from near Sienra to Pico Tresconceyos and forming the boundary with Laviana, extending the La Faya slope southwards. Its hillsides enclose the San Mamés valley, one of those that open to the south of the River Nalón.
Nature
La Campa l'Abeduriu, also called Campa l'Abedul, is a former open-cast coal working in the parish of Linares, a few kilometres from the mining town of El Entrego. HUNOSA worked the mine from the 1980s and, after its closure around the year 2000, restored it by replanting native tree species and turning it into a recreational area. The hollow left by the working, which still shows the great cut opened into the hillside forming a ravine, was turned into two small ponds; grazing of cattle and horses is allowed there, and goats and trees such as plum and pine trees are common. The site, at over 500 metres of altitude, has a chapel from 1994 and animal shelters, and hosts a trail race every year.
Monument
It occupies the Casona del Bravial in Blimea, the house of the Fernández Miranda family, rectangular in plan and two storeys high, whose origin goes back to the 13th or 14th century. It brings together photographs, newspapers and recorded interviews with local people to save the municipality's popular memory.
Monument
At the spot called La Cabezada stand the remains of the castle of Campogrande, popularly known as the castle of Blimea: an 1897 reconstruction on a 14th-century fortification that ended up collapsing at the end of the 20th century.
Monument
The Museum of Mining and Industry of Asturias (MUMI) stands on the former spoil heap of the pozo San Vicente, next to El Entrego, in the municipality of San Martín del Rey Aurelio, one of the towns with the strongest mining tradition in the region. Opened in March 1994 as part of the economic reconversion of the mining basins, it is one of the most visited cultural centres in Asturias, with around 60,000 visitors a year. Its main building, cylindrical in shape with the headframe tower, and two side wings hold rooms with reproductions of laboratories, tools, minerals and machinery from Asturian mining. The visit is completed with the «mina imagen», an underground gallery reached by a lift that simulates a cage.
Monument
Hermitage of the parish of San Martín, near Sotrondio, built over an old Romanesque temple of which only remains survive, such as corbels carved with geometric patterns along the edge of the roof. It is a simple single-nave temple, with two round-arched doorways in ashlar and a two-bayed bellcote above the portal; inside, a carving of the Cristo del Socorro is venerated, to which tradition attributes eight centuries of age. On the left wall of the central nave is a tomb bearing the inscription Sepulcro del rey Aurelio, to which tradition attributes the burial of the Asturian monarch who died in 774 and gives the concejo its name, although other chronicles place his remains in Cangas de Onís or in the vanished church of San Miguel de Yanguas, in Soria.
Monument
An 18th-century armorial mansion built at Blimea, with its own chapel dedicated to Santa Teresa; it represents the gentry architecture that dominated the valley before coal and the pits arrived.
Monument
An 18th-century ensemble in the Carrocera quarter consisting of the manor house, a small chapel and its panera, one of the best preserved examples of a noble farmstead in the middle Nalón valley.
Monument
Housed in the Casona del Bravial, it brings together testimonies, documents and objects on repression, the war and working-class life in the Nalón basins, a community archive built up from within the municipality itself.
Monument
A vertical shaft at El Entrego declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), the only one in Spain that allows visitors to go down into its galleries in miner's gear; beside its headframe stands the memorial to the victims of mining accidents.
Monument
The church of San Martín de Tours is a chapel of the parish of San Martín, near Sotrondio, in San Martín del Rey Aurelio. The present building stands on an earlier Romanesque one, of which barely any remains survive beyond corbels carved with geometric patterns under the roof; it underwent several alterations over the centuries. It has a single nave, with two round-arched doorways. On the left-hand wall there is a tomb bearing the inscription Sepulcro del rey Aurelio, although there is controversy over the actual whereabouts of his remains, which other chronicles place in Cangas de Onís or in the vanished church of San Miguel de Yanguas, in the province of Soria. Tradition places the burial of Aurelio here, king of Asturias between 768 and 774, whose memory gave the concejo its name; his palace is also attributed to La Varaosa.
Monument
The Teatro Virginia stood in Sotrondio, in the concejo of San Martín del Rey Aurelio, and was built between 1943 and 1946 by the architects Manuel del Busto and his son Juan Manuel, in an Art Deco style with mountain-inspired touches that set it apart among Asturian theatres: a projecting portico, a central arch flanked by balconies and two towers with pinnacles. The Sopeña brothers named it after their mother, Virginia Santos Lantero, and it hosted theatre, cinema and dances until its closure in the 1980s. It was one of the few leisure buildings of the industrial era still in use, but after years of controversy it was almost entirely demolished in 2023 to build a health centre, with only part of the original façade preserved.
Curiosity
The workers' dwellings raised beside the mine entrances are called cuarteles here: rows of humble houses that housed the mining families and that can still be recognised in the built fabric of El Entrego, Sotrondio and Blimea.