It was the second half of the 19th century and Gijón/Xixón was steadily growing as a manufacturing, industrial and working-class city. Key elements in this growth were communications and transport. It was within this context that the North Station came into being, transforming the quiet rural setting of El Natahoyo into one of the city's most important proletarian suburbs. Bounded by rail and sea, and laid out around the road to Candás, the area became a site where many industries were established, including some of the most important 20th-century Spanish shipyards. The railway enabled industrial goods to be shipped by sea, as well as passenger traffic along the central axis of Asturias, from Gijón/Xixón to the mining valleys and vice versa. In short, it became the backbone of life, the economy, social changes and the industrial revolution, constituting a symbol of progress and knowledge.
Today, all that recent history and all the Asturian working-class, industrial, technological and social baggage is clearly illustrated in the use given to Gijón/Xixón's North Station in 1990 when it closed, putting an end to over a hundred years of history, and opening the doors to the knowledge, culture and leisure of present-day generations and travellers through its new life as a Railway Museum.
