A member of the Ribera del Guadiana Wine and Cava Route, Minas de Santa Marta has become a benchmark for geotourism and heritage in the region.

The new discoveries at Minas de Santa Marta have positioned this site as one of the most significant industrial archaeology complexes in the region. As a member of the Ribera del Guadiana Wine and Cava Route, it is a leading destination for geotourism and heritage in Extremadura.

Since this past Sunday, June 20, visitors have been able to see a new discovery. It consists of five mineral-processing structures known as “round buddles” or “rumbos,” facilities that were used to concentrate lead and zinc ores through hydraulic and gravimetric processes between the mid and late 19th century.

This is one of the most important discoveries in Extremadura’s mining heritage in recent decades, as a pioneering mining-industrial technology from the Industrial Revolution—rarely preserved in Spain—has emerged from beneath tons of earth and debris.

HISTORIC INFRASTRUCTURES

Alongside these five remarkably well-preserved buddles, other historic infrastructures of interest have been uncovered, including the foundations of former ball mills, drainage channels, flotation pools, mineral-processing facilities, and elements associated with the lead-silver roasting furnace.

These new findings make it possible to reconstruct more precisely how the Santa Marta mining-industrial complex operated and provide valuable new information about the technological evolution of Spanish mining during the 19th century.

PLACE OF SCIENTIFIC INTEREST

Minas de Santa Marta, located between the municipalities of Santa Marta and Villalba de los Barros, has been declared a Place of Scientific Interest by the Regional Government of Extremadura. The mines were exploited for the extraction of lead, zinc, silver, and vanadium. Indeed, during the 19th and 20th centuries, this site was one of the most important mining districts in southwestern Spain.

From the 1970s onward, the area became a landfill. Thanks to more than twenty years of restoration work carried out by geologist Francisco Javier Fernández Amo, the Santa Marta Town Council, and the management company TUGEOMINEX, the former mining operations have now been transformed into a premier tourist resource that attracts hundreds of visitors, educational centers, associations, and geology enthusiasts from across the country every year.

Today, an extraordinary network of galleries is preserved, along with industrial buildings and mineral-processing facilities. Visitors can explore the rooms of the José María Fernández Amo Geological Museum, which houses one of the most important collections of fossil minerals in the southwestern Iberian Peninsula, as well as a Black Room of fluorescent minerals, a pioneering attraction in Spain and a national reference for the dissemination of mineral luminescence.

In addition, visitors can immerse themselves in history to understand what life and work were like for miners more than a century ago by touring the former Los Llanos Mining Village, where fluorescent minerals are incorporated into the buildings themselves, and the facilities of the Constante Mine. They can also venture into the heart of the earth at the Garandina Mine, the world’s first museumized vanadium mine.

Minas de Santa Marta is a member of the Spanish Association of Tourist Caves and Mines, the Spanish Society for the Protection of Geological and Mining Heritage, the Extremadura Online Tourism Club, a viewpoint of the Ribera del Guadiana Wine and Cava Route, Oleotourism Extremadura, and the Universo Extremadura Association. These memberships provide opportunities to organize a wide variety of activities and workshops throughout the year, including tastings, fluorescent painting, and gemstone panning. Good evening.