Ponferrada () is a city of Spain, located in the autonomous community of Castile and León. Ponferrada, the second most populated municipality of the Province of León, is also the capital city of El Bierzo, the only comarca recognized as an administrative entity by law in the region. Surrounded by mountains, the city straddles the course of the Sil River. It is the last major town on the French route of the Camino de Santiago before it reaches Santiago de Compostela. In 2021, it had a population of 63,747. Etymology Ponferrada comes from the Latin Pons Ferrata, Iron Bridge. History In pre-Roman times the region was populated by the Astures, a Hispano-Celtic Gallaecian people. They were conquered by Emperor Augustus in the Astur-Cantabrian Wars (29-19 BC) and the area quickly became the largest mining center of the Empire during the Roman period, where gold and other metals and minerals were extracted. Numerous Roman mining sites are still visible in the area, one of the most spectacular being Las Médulas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997. Romans also imported grapevines, and wine production thrived in the region until the propagation of Phylloxera at the end of the 19th century, which destroyed the majority of the vineyards. The modern name of the city derives from the iron reinforcements added to the ancient bridge over the river Sil (Latin pons for "bridge" and ferrata for "iron"), commissioned in 1082 by Bishop Osmundo of Astorga to facilitate the crossing of the Sil River to pilgrims in their way to Santiago de Compostela. The railroad arrived in Ponferrada in 1881, and during World War I local tungsten deposits were exploited to supply the arms industry. In 1918 the Ponferrada Mining, Iron and Steel Company () was founded to exploit coal deposits in the region, and it grew to become Spain's largest coal mining corporation. The Spanish National Energy Corporation (Endesa) was founded in 1944 and in 1949 it opened Spain's first coal-fueled power plant in Ponferrada, Compostilla I. In 1960 the Bárcena Dam () opened and by the second half of the 20th century the economy of the city was mainly based on mining and electricity generation, both hydroelectric and coal-fueled. Starting in the late 1980s most mines were closed, and after the collapse of the mining industry Ponferrada was for a while in a crisis. However, in the late 1990s the city underwent