Unquera

Unquera is a village with 803 inhabitants (INE 2005) in the municipality of Val de San Vicente, in the west of the province of Cantabria, Spain.

Unquera is also known as the entrance to the Hermida gorge, the most usual way to access the Liébana district, which has become the main throughway of the town.

The population depends in part on Pesués, the municipal capital, where the town hall, the barracks of the Guardia Civil and the primary school are located.

Unquera may have developed at the end of the 19th century thanks to the improvement of communications, especially by the railroad, and for the commercial boom of the region, possible after the opening of the gorge road (later N-621) in 1863.

This road was used as a way to export, through the Unquera inlet, raw materials from Liébana and the La Hermida gorge to England, Belgium and (Germany).