Capital of the council of the same name, it has about 27,000 inhabitants, located in a valley, on the right bank of the Caudal river, at about 206 meters of altitude.

Mieres has traditionally been a strategic place for Asturias’s communications with Castile. The first documentary references to the town date from the year 857, the use of the name “Mieres del Camino” being attested since the 15th century.

A pilgrim hospital existed in Mieres at least since before the year 1189, at which time an existing hostel next to the Mieres bridge is donated to the monastery of San Vicente de Oviedo. This hospital was ruined by the flooding of the river, it is known that in Modern times it was replaced by the Santa Catalina hospital, of which two locations are known in the street of Mieres, first in the Cay de la Villa de Arriba and, since 1688, in the Plaza de La Paraxuela.

Mieres is one of the great Asturian urban centers, its great development in the 19th and 20th centuries being linked to the arrival of the railway to the town, in 1874, and to the mining exploitation in the council of Mieres.