Pasado Presente, Un viaje por el Bierzo

Video made in different locations in El Bierzo (Castlla y León/Spain)

Firstly, we visited the cornatel castle located in Villavieja, in the municipality of Priaranza del Bierzo.

Declared Asset of Cultural Interest (B.I.C.) on April 22, 1949.

The castle sits on a rocky promontory cut to the east and north by a ravine, with a drop of more than 180m, through which the Rioferreiros stream runs. On its other two flanks, which are easily accessible, it is protected by a single wall covered by a crenellated defensive promenade.

From there we moved to the old Cubillos del Sil railway station, this was born important, and it gained more importance as the years went by, but the Cubillos del Sil station is not original to the railway line inaugurated in 1919. As we have already seen On other occasions, the railway changed valleys to enter the banks of the Sil River, which it now accompanies until its end in Villablino, in tunnel number 1 located at the P.K. 10, and which we visited a few months ago. At the entrance to said tunnel was the Cubillos halt, a small two-story building that does not exist today.

The construction of the Bárcena reservoir in the 1950s forced the construction of a variant of the line that left the track at a higher level than the dammed waters, which completely surrounded the town of Cubillos del Sil. In parallel, the construction of the Compostilla II thermal power plant marked the location of a new station that would replace the missing Congosto station, and at the same time was the origin of the new branch to the thermal power plant.

Right next to the station is the Compostilla II thermal power plant owned by Endesa and in the process of being dismantled. Today the cooling towers and chimney 3 (the smallest of them no longer exist).

The penultimate destination of our visit is the open pit mine known as "La gran Corta de Fabero"

Fabero is a town and municipality in the Province of León. After the industrial revolution, Fabero had its greatest economic and demographic boom, thanks to the discovery and exploitation of its anthracite coal mines. At this time, Fabero went from having 376 inhabitants in 1920 to having 8,140 inhabitants in 1960, feeding this population increase on massive immigration from other regions of Spain.

Currently the mine is closed and a project to recover the environment is being carried out, although today the mine is still preserved in its entirety, kilometers and kilometers of excavations with lagoons that are formed by the accumulation of rainwater, as well an immense esplanade with hundreds of excavators, trucks and other machinery waiting for a better life.

We finished by visiting the Libran swing, which has quickly become a tourist attraction near Ponferrada and unique in El Bierzo. Located in an impressive natural environment, this swing stands out for being the highest in the country. It was built from the transformation of an abandoned zip line that was in the Carboneras valley. The action involved removing the existing zip line and reusing the materials to create the new swing, with the aim of not interfering with the surrounding landscape.