The little big history of the Nalón River, Asturias, Spain

Asturias is a small region (ca 10,600 km² and 10⁶ inhabitants) in the North of Spain in Southwestern Europe. This region of the Iberian Peninsula is quite special due to the climatic conditions caused by the proximity of the Cantabrian Mountain Range to the coastline, with peaks reaching altitudes higher than 2,500 meters above sea level. This green and mountainous region has had its own and particular cultural evolution within the North of Spain, with its own language, gastronomy and historical events. Since the comparatively late conquest by the Romans, around the first century before the current era (BCE), triggered by the discovery of rich and numerous gold deposits in NW Iberia (García-Moreno et al., 2017), the region has shown mining activity up to the present day. However, in this little big history, we will not deal with gold, but with another chemical element that is much more common than this precious metal, namely carbon.