"Mieres del Camin, Asturias, Spain" a Mieres Travel Page by asturnut

Mieres is where I lived when I was in Asturias. It's the place, that despite its grit and it's raw industry, I fell in love with Spain- real Spain, not "vacation Spain."

With about 50,000 inhabitants, Mieres is the heart of the coal mining industry and the financial back bone of Asturies. It's also located almost exactly in the center of Asturias, so it is a good starting point for exploring the region. Furthermore, Mieres has merits of it's own. It has all of the ammenities of a city without being so large that it's overwhelming. Mieres has a cinema and a hodgepodge of small museums, cultural centers, and art galleries. There tons bars, restaurants, and shopping.

Because Mieres is the kind of city that people work in, it doesn't get a lot of visitors, but at the very least it is a nice place to visit for the day for shopping. It has all kinds of wonderful boutiques with high end merchandise. At night, Mieres puts on another face. The streets are alive with people traveling from one bar and trendy discoteque to the next. It's a really fun place, and a great place to connect with real people and get away from tourists.

My favorite thing about Mieres is the fascinating mix of city and rural life. I first was confronted with it while I was sitting on the RENFE train pulling out of the Mieres station. There, before my very eyes, stood a lowly shepherd, threadbare and wrinkled and his small flock. This was shocking to my American sensibilty of the division between urban and rural. But as I came to discover in Spain, "suburban" doesn't exist. There just isn't the space. Another example I encountered shorlty thereafter was behind the town square (Plaza de Requejo.) This is a bustling area always busy with patrons enjoying the gastronomic delights the restaurants in the sqaure. But just behind the square is a rustic neighborhood, replete with apple trees, cows grazing and hens clucking their merry tune, blissfully unaware of their urban surroundings. It's still fascinating and unsettling to me to this very day.

For more pictures of Mieres check out a great Mieres website: www.terra.es/personal/jmblanco45/mieres/mieres.htm

The newly launched official Mieres website is wonderful as well:
www.ayto-mieres.es/ includes photos, events listings, an interactive map and a plethora of other information in Spanish and Asturian (English is under construction).