In Gijón, San Lorenzo beach matters less as scenery than as a place where the city learned to negotiate with the sea. In the 19th century, locals saw it as a rough stretch of sand, dangerous with strong tides and wind, until 1874, when the first seaside bathhouse opened and turned the shoreline into a health resort; by the late 1800s, that same shore was being reimagined as part of the city’s growth rather than its edge.

The turning point came with the seawall project championed by Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, the Enlightenment writer and reformer who had walked these coasts and argued for holding the sea back so Gijón could expand. The wall was not finished until the first decade of the 20th century, but it changed the beach’s role completely: from exposed waterfront to urban promenade. That is why San Lorenzo still feels engineered as much as natural. A visitor can still stand on the curved walk above the sand and see the Escalerona, the monumental stairway built in 1933 to handle the crowds, a concrete reminder that this beach has always been about access, not just admiration.