Mieres, Asturias: municipality guide
Mieres is the most populous municipality in central Asturias after Oviedo and Gijón: 36,373 inhabitants on 146.03 km². Its capital is Mieres del Camino, known in Asturian as Mieres del Camín. Just 20 kilometres from Oviedo, it is the historic heart of coal mining in the Caudal valley and today a municipality that combines its industrial heritage with a growing service sector, the university and cultural tourism.
Things to see in Mieres
The town of Mieres was born in the mid-19th century as an industrial settlement to house miners and steelworkers, which explains its orthogonal street plan, crossed by the river Caudal and shaped by the old mining railways. Calle Manuel Llaneza is the axis of the town centre, flanked by the town hall and a House of Culture housed in the old School of Mining Foremen (Escuela de Capataces).
The church of San Juan Bautista, under whose patronage the town festivals are held, is the main church of the town. A few kilometres away, the mining village of Bustiello is one of the finest examples of industrial heritage in Asturias: a model village built for the miners with a school, church, company store and hospital, visitable as a landmark of industrial tourism.
The valley of Cuna and Cenera, west of the municipality, is a rural landscape of meadows and native woodland where the sanctuary of the Santos Mártires de Valdecuna stands —the scene, every 27 September, of one of the most famous pilgrimages in Asturias. The municipality is also crossed by the Anillo Ciclista de la Montaña Central (Central Mountain Cycling Ring), a very demanding route linking the main passes of the comarca.
The University of Oviedo has one of its campuses in Mieres, the Campus de Mieres, focused on engineering and human resources studies. The town was once the third city of Asturias before Avilés grew with Ensidesa, and it keeps two railway stations (FEVE and Renfe) and a bus station with services to Madrid.
Camino de Santiago: the Camino del Salvador, an official Jacobean route between León and Oviedo via the port of Pajares, crosses the municipality. It is no coincidence that the capital is called Mieres del Camín: its link with the pilgrimage to the Cathedral of San Salvador in Oviedo is part of its identity.
How to get there
The A-66 motorway (Ruta de la Plata) connects Mieres with Oviedo in about 20 minutes; the N-630 crosses the municipality as the historic route. There are FEVE and Renfe stations (Cercanías line C-1) and a bus station with regular services, including the line to Madrid.
Festivals and gastronomy
The patronal festivals are those of San Juan, on 24 June: the Noche de San Xuan (St John’s Eve) with the bonfire in the Town Hall square, the Danza Prima dance, the adornment of the fountains and Asturian mythology —xanas, cuélebres and trasgos— as their hallmark. On 27 September comes the pilgrimage of the Santos Mártires de Valdecuna, declared a Festival of Tourist Interest, at the sanctuary in the Cuna y Cenera valley. The calendar also includes Carnival, the Folixa na Primavera (April) and Santa Bárbara (4 December), with the Jornadas Gastronómicas del pote de Turón (Turón stew gastronomic days). On the table: Urbiés cheese, one of the strongest in Asturias, the pote mierense con rabadal (Mieres-style bean stew with pork tail), guisantes con jamón (peas with ham), pitu de caleya (free-range chicken), trucha grandona (large trout), bollo preñado, casadiellas and, as everywhere in Asturias, cider.
Municipality facts
Coat of arms: Wikimedia Commons (free license)
- Capital: Mieres del Camino
- Population: 36,373 inhabitants (INE 2025)
- Area: 146.03 km²
- Zone: Central
- Demonym: mierense
- Town Hall: Plaza de la Constitución s/n, 33600 Mieres del Camino. Tel. +34 985 46 61 11
Neighbouring municipalities
Useful links
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See it on the interactive map: The 78 municipalities of Asturias
