VALNALON (Ciudad Industrial del Valle del Nalón, S.A.U.)
was created by the Department for Industry and Labour of the Government of the Principality of
Asturias
Asturias (; ; ) officially the Principality of Asturias, is an autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in northwest Spain.
It is coextensive with the provinces of Spain, province of Asturias and contains some of the territory t ...
,
Spain
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
in 1987. The goal is to design and implement a plan to regenerate, promote and dynamise a former industrial area in
Nalon River Valley. In order to achieve this, some of the most outstanding century-old buildings in the
Felguera Factory,
steelworks
A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel. It may be an integrated steel works carrying out all steps of steelmaking from smelting iron ore to rolled product, but may also be a plant where steel semi-fini ...
factory compound, whose gates closed in 1984, were refurbished.
Aims
The plan has evolved, tilting the focus from the ''development of infrastructures'' (Business centre, industrial estate, training centre) to a firm commitment to ''develop entrepreneurship'' in order to change mindsets, facilitating the transition from the
industrial age
The Industrial Age is a period of history that encompasses the changes in economic and social organization that began around 1760 in Great Britain and later in other countries, characterized chiefly by the replacement of hand tools with power-d ...
to a more
entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones.
An entreprene ...
ial society.
Technological city
The concept ''Industrial City'' has morphed into ''Technological City'' mainly driven by the creation and development of
start-ups in the
Information and Communication Technologies
Information and communications technology (ICT) is an extensional term for information technology (IT) that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals) and compute ...
(ICT) sector.
Action plan
In 1993 Valnalon was commissioned by Asturias regional government to implement the recently launched Asturias Entrepreneurship Action Plan (Cadena de Formación para Emprender) with two priority areas:
;Education
''Entrepreneurship education'', whose goal is to develop enterprising skills and attitudes in all levels of the education system.
;Promotion
''Business promotion'', whose goal is to support business development.
Stakeholders
In this sense, Valnalon seeks to engage a wide array of
stakeholders as all of them should be involved and contribute to the development of an entrepreneurial culture.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Valnalon
Economic history of Spain
Asturias
Urban renewal
Industrial parks in Spain