Demolished coal shaft site at Llombera de Gordón, León, scene of a fatal 2013 grisú disaster; headframe demolished 2021 and site converted to agricultural use.
Pozo Emilio del Valle was a deep coal shaft sunk from 1992 at Llombera de Gordón, in the municipality of La Pola de Gordón, León, as part of the Hullera Vasco-Leonesa's ambitious 'Nueva Mina' project — at the time described as the most ambitious mining project in twentieth-century Spain and Europe. Completed in 1994 to a depth of 694 metres and a diameter of 6.5 metres, the shaft was equipped with a 32-metre portico-frame headframe of riveted metal construction, relocated from the Pozo Alberto at Cardona in Catalonia. Originally named Tabliza after the mining group it served, it was renamed in 1995 to honour Emilio del Valle Egocheaga, a director of the Hullera Vasco-Leonesa from 1948.
The shaft exploited the Matallana and Llombera synclines. It was the scene of a catastrophic grisú gas escape on 28 October 2013 that killed six miners and injured eight others, the gravest mine accident in León province in recent decades. The mine closed at the end of 2018, the shaft headframe was demolished in October 2021, the shaft sealed, and the site converted to agricultural use.
The Hullera Vasco-Leonesa was a private coal company with origins in the nineteenth century whose operations were concentrated in the Ciñera-Matallana coalfield of León. From the late 1980s the company planned a major investment to access deeper coal reserves, developing what was branded the 'Nueva Mina' — a project whose scale was described as the most ambitious in twentieth-century Spanish and European mining. The core element of this undertaking was the sinking of a new deep vertical shaft at Llombera de Gordón, in the municipality of La Pola de Gordón, León.
Profundisation of the shaft began in 1992. The site was known during construction as the Pozo Tabliza, after the Grupo Tabliza mining concession area it served. By the time sinking was complete in 1993–1994, the shaft had reached a depth of 694 metres and a diameter of 6.5 metres. In April 1995 the Hullera Vasco-Leonesa awarded the contract for the underground workings of the new shaft. The projected reserves accessible through the project were estimated at 50 million tonnes of coal, sufficient to sustain extraction for at least 25 years, with an initial target output of 2.5 million tonnes annually. The shaft was the third of the active headframes in the Nueva Mina complex, alongside those of the Aurelio del Valle and Eloy Rojo shafts.
The headframe erected at the Tabliza site was a portico-frame structure, 32 metres high, with four inclined uprights, originally designed to work with a Koepe tricable pulley system at ground level and two conventional cylindrical drums on the opposite side. Notably, the headframe was not purpose-built: it had been dismantled from the Pozo Alberto at Cardona in the province of Barcelona and re-erected at Llombera. The official inauguration of the Pozo Tabliza took place on 24 September 1994.
In 1995, under the presidency of Antonio del Valle, the shaft was formally renamed Pozo Emilio del Valle in honour of Emilio del Valle Egocheaga, who had served as a director of the Hullera Vasco-Leonesa since 1948. During its early productive years, the operation returned rapidly growing extraction rates. By 1996, productivity measured in kilograms per man-hour exceeded 634. The shaft exploited the Matallana syncline (capa Ancha) and the Llombera syncline (capa Competidora).
The fortunes of the Hullera Vasco-Leonesa and of Spanish coal mining more broadly began to deteriorate significantly from the late 2000s. The European Union's 2010 decision to require the closure of uneconomic coal operations by December 2018, combined with structural financing failures in the national coal subsidy system, placed the company in an impossible economic position. In March 2013 the Hullera Vasco-Leonesa entered a pre-insolvency process before the Juzgado de lo Mercantil in León.
On 28 October 2013, at 13:24 hours, a sudden escape of grisú (firedamp) at the seventh working level of Pozo Emilio del Valle, at a depth of approximately 449 metres in macizo 7 of the Grupo Tabliza, killed six miners and injured eight others. The dead were Carlos Pérez, Manuel Moure, Antonio Blanco, Orlando González, José Luis Arias, and Roberto Álvarez, all workers aged between 35 and 45 years. Post-mortem reports indicated asphyxia caused by oxygen depletion as the probable cause of death. The accident was the gravest in León province coal mining in the previous thirty years and the second gravest grisú-related accident in Spain in that period. Sixteen individuals, including the company's president, vice-president, and a board member from the Del Valle family, along with technical directors and safety personnel, were subsequently charged in connection with the deaths. The trial did not commence until February 2023 and resulted in the acquittal of all sixteen accused, a verdict delivered in November 2025.
Interior extraction operations at the Hullera Vasco-Leonesa had effectively ceased by 8 May 2015, the last day of underground coal extraction at the company's operations. The company formally declared insolvency in February 2016, ending 123 years of corporate history. Under concursal administration, residual surface operations continued in a reduced form until September 2018, when the total closure of the Tabliza installations was announced, with a formal closure date of 31 December 2018.
On 22 October 2021, the 32-metre headframe of Pozo Emilio del Valle was demolished. The demolition was a condition imposed by the mining authorities (Minas) as a prerequisite for the new owner of the site to pursue agricultural use. The shaft was sealed at the same time. By that date, cattle were already grazing on the former pit-top ground. A memorial monolith commemorating the six miners killed in 2013 was relocated to the nearby town of Ciñera. The former pithead site is now used as pasture land.