The Last Days and Afterlife of the San Nicolás Mine

This project was supported by a grant from the National Geographic Society.

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A controlled demolition at the Narcea Thermal Power Plant in Soto de la Barca. The demolition was part of the of the decommissioning process of the Naturgy-owned facility, which symbolized the end of the coal era in Asturias. Soto de la Barca, Asturias, February 2024.

In 2010, the Spanish government came to an agreement with the European Union that formalized what was already a deep, generational shift in the country’s relationship to coal, a resource that had profoundly shaped the economy and culture of the northern principalities. In accordance with that agreement, Spain would shutter any remaining state-subsidized, uncompetitive coal mines by the end of 2018, thus accelerating the country’s shift toward cleaner energy and a brave new economy. Spanish coal by then was more of an industrial tradition than a major economic force, with the country importing more than 90 percent of its coal used for energy—a far cry from the industry’s heyday in the 1950s and ’60s, when it employed more than 100,000 miners across the country. By 2020, when photographer Lys Arango began documenting coal’s last chapter, that number had winnowed to fewer than three hundred, all working at the country’s last active mine.

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The offices of the Candín mine, closed since 2013. Langreo, Asturias, November 2020.

Arango’s grandparents had settled in the northwestern region of Asturias when coal was king. Her father grew up in the town of La Felguera and eventually moved to metropolitan Madrid to raise a family. He often told his children stories of the strangely idyllic countryside of his boyhood, set against mountains and valleys permeated by the sights and sounds of coal’s extraction. To a child in Madrid, these stories had a fantastical quality. “He described a world of green mountains and narrow valleys, where the river ran black and the town awoke to the siren—the turullu— announcing the descent of workers into the Earth’s interior.”

The future of the coal industry was a political flashpoint when Arango was a journalism intern in 2012. That summer, the Asturian miners’ strike led to intense clashes with police, along with the blockage of several dozen roads and even train lines. There was, too, an outpouring of public support as thousands gathered to greet a group of more than two hundred miners who had embarked on a twenty-day march to Madrid. It was during this turbulent summer that Arango began to look for ways to document the aftershocks of coal’s absence. As with many industries, coal was more than just a resource; it embodied a culture and a political tradition. And yet its end was inevitable. The future belonged to new industries—and by extension, new ways of life.

The San Nicolás mine, located in the same Asturian basin where Arango’s father grew up, was the last to go, the last three hundred miners pushed into unpredictable futures. Arango headed there in October 2020 to document what this transition would look like, and what Asturians had to say about it, capturing the vestiges of her father’s boyhood legends. 

“At first, the project was more about the decline of the mine culture,” she says. “But after documenting this end of mining and its cultural legacy in these towns, I thought it would be interesting to cover what happens after coal. To show how the region begins its social and environmental evolution. In Asturias, they’re very proud of their mining past. Without the industry, they had no clear definition. People couldn’t find work, villages saw depopulation. But there was also this other thing happening: Some people decided to stay and redefine what life would be like in these towns after mining. So, it was fascinating to watch and capture this tension between nostalgia and possibility.”

A controlled explosion during the environmental restoration of the Buseiro open-pit mine. Tineo, Asturias, February 2024.