Demolished coal shaft site at Santa Lucía de Gordón, León, the oldest of the Nueva Mina group, whose 18-metre headframe was demolished in October 2017.
Pozo Eloy Rojo was a vertical coal shaft forming part of the Nueva Mina project of the Hullera Vasco-Leonesa in the Ciñera-Matallana coalfield, sited at Santa Lucía de Gordón in the municipality of La Pola de Gordón, León. Named after the company's long-serving president of its administrative council (1943–1977), the shaft was sunk and completed in 1977 and entered service shortly afterwards using modern cutting machinery. It was the oldest and smallest of the three extraction shafts of the Nueva Mina complex, with an 18-metre headframe over a shaft of 250 metres depth and 4.5 metres diameter.
The shaft served the sinclinal of Matallana coalfield together with the adjacent Pozo Aurelio del Valle. Interior extraction at the Hullera Vasco-Leonesa ceased on 8 May 2015. The headframe was demolished by explosive blast in October 2017 during the ordered closure process; as of 2020 only the capped shaft collar remained visible on site.
Pozo Eloy Rojo was one of three vertical extraction shafts forming the Nueva Mina complex of the Hullera Vasco-Leonesa (HVL), located at Santa Lucía de Gordón in the concejo of La Pola de Gordón, León. The shaft was named in honour of Eloy Rojo, who served as president of the company's board of directors from 1943 to 1977.
The Hullera Vasco-Leonesa was founded in 1893 and became one of the oldest and most significant private coal mining companies in Spain, working the Ciñera-Matallana coalfield of the Montaña Central Leonesa over more than a century. The company's operations historically centred on the Grupo Ciñera and the Grupo Santa Lucía, and from the early twentieth century it developed an extensive network of underground workings connecting these two groups.
The Nueva Mina project was a major modernisation initiative. Its creation was approved by the European Union in 1990. The scheme envisaged a new integrated underground complex of 12.7 square kilometres with a projected investment of approximately 270 million euros, designed to exploit two coal seams: the Capa Ancha, served by the Pozo Aurelio del Valle, and the Capa Competidora. The total system encompassed more than 65 kilometres of galleries and a mining network of around 16 kilometres, served by three shafts: Pozo Eloy Rojo, Pozo Aurelio del Valle, and Pozo Emilio del Valle.
Pozo Eloy Rojo was the first of the three shafts to be sunk. The shaft was completed in 1977 and entered production service shortly afterwards using modern continuous cutting machinery (rozadoras). The shaft had a diameter of 4.5 metres, reached 250 metres depth, and was served by an 18-metre extraction headframe — the smallest and oldest of the three Nueva Mina headframes. It was classified as the most ancient shaft in the Santa Lucía plaza. In operation it served as an auxiliary access shaft for the tunnel to La Robla as well as an extraction shaft.
Mining activity at the Hullera Vasco-Leonesa's interior operations at Santa Lucía de Gordón ceased on 8 May 2015, marking the last day of underground extraction. The company subsequently entered formal liquidation proceedings in 2016. On 13 June 2016 four miners — Elías Ortega, Sócrates Fernández, Álvaro Cuesta, and Daniel Garguño — conducted an underground occupation at the adjacent Pozo Aurelio del Valle, remaining at 200 metres depth for 18 days (three of them on hunger strike) in protest at the lack of funds for an ordered closure. The protest ended without securing the commitments sought.
The ordered closure process, contracted to the subcontractor Radial 21, began in January 2017. Demolition of offices, changing rooms, and workshops at the Santa Lucía complex preceded the headframes. In October 2017 the headframe of Pozo Eloy Rojo was demolished by controlled explosive blast, described in press reports as the end of the interior mining era in Santa Lucía de Gordón. The headframe of the neighbouring Pozo Aurelio del Valle was subsequently dismantled piece by piece, as the Junta de Castilla y León declined to authorise a further explosive demolition.
By 2020, when the site was revisited by specialist photographers, only the capped shaft collars of both Pozo Eloy Rojo and Pozo Aurelio del Valle remained visible, surrounded by grazing land. All above-ground structures had been removed. The nearby Pozo Ibarra at Ciñera de Gordón — the oldest surviving shaft structure in the area, opened in 1930 — was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural in 2011 and remained standing as the last above-ground structure of interior coal mining in the Montaña Central Leonesa.