SEPI Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales

• A parade of bagpipers and miners – either working, in early retirement, retired, the children of those who died in pit accidents and miners from León – who, to the sound of the miners’ song Santa Bárbara Bendita, fueron lightning the lights before the stelae of the dead closed a highly emotional event 

• Nuberu, Marisa Valle Roso, Anabel Santiago, Héctor Braga, Natalia Vázquez, the chamber orchester of Siero, Maxi Rodríguez, Vanessa Gutiérrez, Alberto Rodríguez and Pachi Poncela, besides of the choir Santiaguín, the mining choir of Turón, and the choir San Martín de Sotrondio and the band “Gaiteros del carbón” completed the list of participant artists

More than 2,000 persons turned up at the Sotón Pit on Friday night for paying homage to the memory of the more than 4,000 miners who died in Asturias in work-related accidents. The event, promoted by HUNOSA as part of the fifty anniversary  of its incorporation, included music, poetry, literature, light shows on the headframe and a performance in which took part a bagpiper band and a group of miners on behalf of the main groups in this industry: the children of miners who died in work-related accidents, those working, in early retirement, retired, and miners from the neighboring province of León.

The list of artists which took part in the event “In Memory of our Miners” was made up by Nuberu, Marisa Valle Roso, Anabel Santiago, Héctor Braga, Natalia Vázquez, the chamber orchestra of Siero, Maxi Rodríguez, Vanessa Gutiérrez, Alberto Rodríguez and Pachi Poncela, besides of the Coro Santiaguín, the Coro Minero de Turón and the choir of San Martín de Sotrondio, and the band “Gaiteros del carbón”. And, besides a large audience, political representatives from all political parties, members from the Lower and Higher Houses of Parliament, representatives from the employers’ associations, cultural luminaries, etc.

Among other contents, took place the reading of texts from William Wordsworth and from Armando Palacio Valdés; in the latter case, these were played with the recorded voice of the own author. The Siero Chamber Orchestra, which played during the whole event, opened with a piece of the Nife score, which was written in 1995 by the Cuban Flores Chaviano after the tragic year endured by Asturian coal mining, during which 33 miners died in different mining accidents. That prompted Chaviano to write that requiem for the miners. “Few people had such a first-hand experience of Death as the neighbors of the coal mining region when the pits were in full swing. There was always a child without a father at the school, women called “the widow of…”, and always bad news”, told the background voice of the journalist Pachi Poncela, who hosted the event paying homage to all those who one day did not go out from the pit and also to all those who were left at the surface waiting forever for them.

Lights, color, words and heartbreaking songs at the Pozo Sotón’s square. A total of 187 artists took part, all with a purpose which was summarized by some of the participants: “Let us do not forget the memory, because without memory we are left without identity”, pointed out a moved Chus Pedro, or “only remembrance allows us to halt Time”, commented later Anabel Santiago when assessing the performance in the social networks. “It is said that at the miners’ homes there should be no phones: because an out of hours call frighten all those living there, even years after the miner has left the mining job” said Poncela. Stories which made the heart of the audience bleed, and also among those on the stage. As was the case of the poet Vanessa Gutiérrez. Her childhood home had no telephone, but the news of her father’s death at the mine arrived all the same.   Luckily, it was all a misunderstanding, she recalled during her speech honoring the women who worked at the mines: “Washerwomen, nurses, or telephone operators, who toiled for equality. So many names, so often silenced”.