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TOURISM INFORMATION OFFICE RIÓPAR

C/ San Vicente, 2
02450, Riópar (Albacete)
Phone: +34 967435230
turismoriopar@hotmail.com

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SIERRA MINERA FOUNDATION
Info:
+34 968 540 344
+34 667 428 325
fundacio@fundacionsierraminera.org



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Industrial Heritage of Cartagena

Sierra Minera de Cartagena-La Unión
The mountain range in "Cartagena-La Unión", located in the southern edge of the Region of Murcia, it's a coastal mountain range of about 25 km. length linking Cartagena and "Cabo de Palos". It is the southeast end of the "Béticas"" mountain ranges. Their reliefs do not go pass the 450 meters and they extend in East-West direction. It has very precise borders: to the East, the "Mar Menor", to the South the Mediterranean Sea forming the docks of "Escombreras" and "Portmán". To the West the important port of Cartagena surrounds the area and connects with the southern mountain ranges of the "Algarrobo" and the "Moreras". It includes the local areas of Cartagena and La Unión, and also all the dependent villages associated to the located mining activities in the North slope of the mountain range -  "El Llano de Beal", (the Beal flat land) the Beal,  the "Estrecho de San Ginés" (San Ginés Strait) and a bit more further down, Roche. In addition, the areas along the South slope with Portmán, the "Gorguel"  and "Alumbres".  The mining district of Cartagena-La Unión is one of most outstanding ones of the Iberian Peninsula and it has important metallic mineral deposits, mainly from lead and zinc.
                                                                                                                 
In the "Sierra Minera de Cartagena-La Unión" (a mining mountain range in Cartagena-The Unión) a very intense mining-industrial production activity has been long developed  Its history traces back to the 3rd century b.C. with civilizations like the Carthaginians and the Romans who already exploited the mining wealth of the area on great scale.  Although it is in the 19th century when the mining grows up in the area, thus becoming the engine of the economic and industrial development, and multiplying underground mining facilities scattered all over the Sierra, until it reaches a number over 1,200 mining concessions. After the mining crisis in the first decades of the 20th century,  a new cycle of intense mining production is developed. In 1950, open cast quarries were used on mining, causing a brutal impact on the landscape, until in 1991 the mining in the area is finally closed.

The surprisingly transformed physical environment has been settled and it owns a great variety of industrial-mining heritage, where there are still naturally revealing areas which totally keep their great values. The intense mining activity has given us such a valuable industrial inheritance spread throughout the whole of the mountain range. Amongst the mining elements that remain in the area, there are a wide variety of wood towers, metal towers, and also some other made of rubblework, machine houses, chimneys, furnaces, laundries, powder magazines, tunnels and so on and so forth. One can also see the remainings of the enormous open-cast quarries.

 Together with this wide variety of buildings which are linked to the mining, there is also a great repertoire of movable properties, with machinery traction wheels, pulleys, delivery trucks, carriage buckets, remainings of the mining train, digging machines, etc.  In 2004 an inventory was carried out where almost 500 geologic, archaeological, mining and architectonic elements were labelled into a total of 13 mining sets. They were, as follows the Parreta, Cabezo Rajao and its outskirts, the Descargador, the Matildes, the Beal, the Llano, Ponce, Peña del Águila, Portmán, the Gorguel, Rambla del Arenque, Cuesta de Las Lajas-Carretera del 33.
This unique mining landscape has been named of Cultural Interest, in the category of Historical Placement for being an area of extraordinary mineral, archaeological, ethnographic and environmental richness. It has also been included in the list of outstanding elements of the Industrial Patrimony of our country.

This priceless industrial legacy brought up by the hard work and the effort of the miners, it's also important to add another cultural heritage which is one of a kind. This is, indeed a great number of "cantes flamencos" (a very pure type of folk music that evokes a sense of claiming) that arose from the hard working conditions that the miners went through and whose celebration comes once a year in the "Festival Internacional del Cante de las Minas" (a flamenco festival that takes place along the mining landscape).