Km 525: An immersion into the mining history of the Guadiato.
Balutia connects paths and memories. Among pastures, mountains, and valleys, it also crosses mining towns where the past still beats beneath the stones. Balutia has that privilege — to travel through lands where history left deep scars. And few places embody that memory better than Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo.
At kilometer 525, the route first passes through Peñarroya and then Pueblonuevo del Terrible — two towns born apart but ultimately united by mining into a single heartbeat. Here, in the heart of Alto Guadiato, one of Spain’s greatest industrial epics took place.
The story begins in 1881, when the Peñarroya Mining and Metallurgical Company (SMMP) was founded in a Paris office, driven by French engineer Charles Ledoux. Backed by European capital and an unprecedented capacity for innovation at the time, the company quickly transformed a rural territory into an industrial giant.
So much so that by 1917, Peñarroya housed the most modern lead smelter in all of Europe, and by 1930, the SMMP had become Spain’s leading industrial company.
But Peñarroya’s model went far beyond mining exploitation — it became a true company town. The SMMP created a French industrial colony where everything revolved around the company. It built not only factories and workshops, but also housing, schools, hospitals, and social spaces for its thousands of workers. By 1960, it housed up to 30,000 people, organized around a paternalistic system that controlled both production and everyday life.
That growth attracted entire families from across Spain and abroad. The town expanded with working-class neighborhoods beside the mines and smelters, but also with exclusive areas for engineers and executives. One of them was the French Quarter, which Balutia crosses as it enters Pueblonuevo del Terrible. Its elegant residences still recall how the technicians who came from France and other European countries left their cultural and architectural mark here.
The route then enters El Cerco, the industrial heart of the town. Among chimneys, warehouses, and old storage buildings, one can still feel the scale of what this complex once was. Here, workers toiled smelting lead, processing coal, and loading trains without rest.
From El Cerco, Balutia joins the Vía Verde de la Maquinilla — a project led by the Asociación La Maquinilla to recover sections of the old mining railway lines. The route connects with Belmez, another place deeply shaped by coal, where mines opened in the mid-19th century provided work for generations of families well into the 20th century.
To pedal through these places today is to ride through an open-air museum. Every stone, every headframe, and every chimney stands as a testament to an era that forever changed the face of the Guadiato region. Balutia not only seeks to connect paths and natural landscapes, but also to give voice to this mining heritage that remains part of our collective memory.
We want to extend special thanks to Rubén Cañamaque, who has accompanied us in this historical exploration and guided us in technical decisions along the route. His passion and knowledge are an essential bridge between Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo’s mining past and its cultural present.
Texto y fotografía David Molina @davidmolinagrande
A los pedales: Antonio Pedrosa @parchita_velo.cc