Xixón (Civ6)/Civilopedia

A non-descript place lying on the north coast of Iberia lay Gijon. Indeed, at various times the town has been abandoned, notably in the 9th Century AD when a Norman fleet docked there and declared the place 'civitas deserta.' Previously, various barbarian settlements had left no trace either; by the 7th Century, the Visigoth king Susebut had supplanted the rather tenuous Roman hold. Gijon was, for about a century, capital of the Muslim territories along the Cantabric Sea, until 722 when Pelagius won the battle of Covadonga to become the first king of Asturias. Until 1270 AD, the town is not mentioned again in any records; in that year, it seems that Alfonso X granted it its “Carta Pueblo.” Between the battle and the carta, the only mentions of Gijon are in a couple Danish sagas.