Gijón

Gijón, called Xixón in the Asturian language, is a port city and municipality on the Cantabrian Sea coast of northwestern Spain. It is the most populous city and municipality of the autonomous community of Asturias, larger than the regional capital Oviedo, which lies about 24 kilometres to the southwest. The city grew around the small peninsula of Cimavilla, its original settlement, which separates the beach of San Lorenzo from the western beaches, the shipyards, the recreational port and the commercial Port of El Musel. Its earliest traces include Neolithic dolmens and the Astur and Roman settlement at Campa Torres, and during the twentieth century it developed as a steel and shipbuilding centre. With the decline of heavy industry it has turned toward tourism, university education, commerce and research. It has a temperate oceanic climate with cool summers and mild, wet winters, and its municipality had about 270,000 residents in 2024.