History
The coal deposits of the Candín and Pajomal valleys at Vega, Langreo, were documented in mining surveys of the eighteenth century, and the seams of the area were formally demarcated as concessions in October 1839. During the nineteenth century the concessions in this part of the valley passed through multiple owners. The Sociedad Fábrica de Mieres, the enterprise associated with the French businessman Numa Guilhou, eventually held the concessions on the left bank of the Candín.
In 1918, Fábrica de Mieres began works to sink a shaft at this location, to be named San Enrique. The works were interrupted shortly after they started, probably as a result of financial difficulties. By 1920 the Minas de Langreo y Siero sources record that a new attempt had sunk 68 metres of the shaft on the left bank of the Candín, and that a winding engine, electrical plant, and compressor had been installed, but the project was again suspended. In 1925 the concessions passed to the Sociedad Anónima Minas de Langreo y Siero, which had taken over part of the Guilhou company's interests. Work resumed in 1931, and the shaft was completed and inaugurated in 1933 under the popular name Lláscaras or Lláscares, with the formal name San Enrique.
The shaft site occupies a strategic position beside the river Candín, which was used for coal washing, alongside the tracks of the Ferrocarril de Langreo, the Carretera Carbonera, and immediately adjacent to the former steelworks at La Felguera. The earliest surviving surface structure is a ventilator building from the early 1930s. Other buildings constructed during the first phase of operation include the coal washery and the compressor and stores building of 1934, the workers' washhouse of the 1930s, and the offices of 1942. These early buildings share a classically detailed brick construction style, with oculi, semi-circular arched openings, and pediment forms repeated across several structures. Workers' quarters built adjacent to the shaft, owned by Minas de Langreo y Siero, were constructed on a platform retained by a large stone wall; these housed lampmen, horse handlers, and other specialist and maintenance staff.
The steel headframe erected in 1933 was extended in height in 1963 when the shaft was deepened and a new winding engine room and loading bay were added. The shaft was deepened in stages, eventually reaching a total depth in excess of 600 metres. A chimney of 1920, a remnant of an earlier phase of surface works, survives in a partial state.
In 1967 the shaft was integrated into Hunosa along with the adjacent Candín I shaft, and was redesignated Candín II. The two shafts had been operated by separate companies — Minas de Langreo y Siero holding the Lláscaras concession and Carbones de Langreo holding the Santa Eulalia concession on the opposite bank — and the 1967 integration brought them under unified state ownership for the first time. In the major restructuring of 1973, Hunosa connected the Candín I and Candín II workings at their lowest working level, linking the base of Lláscaras at 473 metres to the base of Santa Eulalia. Candín II was subsequently deepened by a further 180 metres to match the base level of Candín I, bringing its total depth to above 600 metres. The role of the Lláscaras shaft changed: extraction was concentrated at Candín I, while the Lláscaras caña served as the entry and exit point for mining personnel and as the principal ventilation shaft.
The major accident in the history of Lláscaras occurred in 1944, when a firedamp explosion killed three miners. A miners' sit-in took place at the shaft in 2012 in protest at the impending end of coal extraction in Asturias.
The shaft closed in early 2013, within the framework of the closure of Asturian coal mines announced by the European Union under the state aid deadlines for the sector. Nearly all of the original pithead installations remain standing. Of the nineteen buildings in the complex, three are protected under the Hunosa Plan Territorial Especial catalogue — the headframe and loading bay, the winding engine house, and the offices — while three further buildings are protected under the Langreo municipal urban planning catalogue: the former washery, the compressor and stores building, and the washhouse. The shaft site has also been used as a location for film and television productions, including the short film A golpe de tacón in 2007 and the television series La zona in 2017.