Las Médulas

Las Médulas

 

Location: 20 km from Ponferrada, El Bierzo   Map

 

Description of Las Medulas

Las Médulas is a Spanish landscape environment formed by an old Roman gold mining operation located in the vicinity of the town of the same name, in the Bierzo region, province of León, autonomous community of Castilla y León. It is considered the largest open-pit gold mine in the entire Roman Empire. This environment was declared a Site of Cultural Interest in 1996, due to its archaeological interest. A year later the complex was declared by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, and as a Natural Monument in 2002.

The engineering work carried out to extract the mineral using the montium ruin method, involved alteration of the environment but resulted in a landscape of reddish sands, currently partially covered with chestnut and oak vegetation. It is considered a "cultural landscape" and has the name "Cultural Park." Las Médulas is an abandoned and undepleted mining operation. The landscape created reflects the variations that the exploitation works carried out, from the disappearance of the mountains channeling their debris to specific places for subsequent sifting and filtering, to the creation of an artificial lake due to the accumulated sediments, Lake Carucedo, As well as the immense hydraulic infrastructure built, there are more than 400 km of canals, some more than 100 km in length, necessary for this.

The Médulas area is an agricultural exploitation area where chestnut and cherry trees abound, which are exploited by the inhabitants of the surrounding towns who maintain their customs regarding their exploitation. The land is communal but the trees, especially the chestnut, are private.​ In its vicinity there is a quarry that, despite being declared illegal in 2008, continues to operate.Ancient Romans established a huge industrial complex in the hills of Las Medulas. There is no sufficient source of water for 60,000 free workers that worked in these hills so military engineers had to constructed 77 aqueducts to bring water to the area from Cabrera and Eria rivers some 100 km away. Their remains are still visible today. Some of them can actually be hiked by tourists. Historical record indicate that at the peak of its use Las Medulas produced 20,000 Roman pounds (one Roman pound or libra is equal to 328.9 grams) per year with a total production of 5,000,000 Roman pounds or 1,650,000 kg of gold. Las Medulas was abandoned due to invasions of barbarian tribes that attacked and killed workers.

 

History

Las Médulas was originally an open-pit Roman gold mine, although the pre-Roman indigenous peoples had already exploited the deposit, mining the river placers. It is estimated that the Romans began working in the area during the time of Emperor Octavius Augustus, who personally directed most of the actions between 26 and 19 BC they definitively conquered the peoples of the north of the Iberian Peninsula, Asturians and Cantabrians (the current toponym should not be confused with Mount Medulio, where the holocaust of the Cantabrians took place, who preferred to kill themselves rather than surrender. However, the location of Mount Medulio is still the subject of discussion), when gold was needed to make coins when this metal was introduced, the aureus coin with a weight of 1/40 of the Roman pound, approximately 8 g in weight, as a reference. With the fall of the Roman Empire, the exploitation of the mine was abandoned.

 

Name's origin

Among experts there is a theory according to which it would come from the traditional name given to the piles of straw, very common in the area. In the traditional speech of Bierzo, still in use, there are words such as meda, conical-shaped heap, and medar, to pile up grass, as well as medeiro, which according to professor Jesús García y García are "relatives" of the Castilian médano (dune or pile of sand), coming, according to him, from the Latin voice meta. Other authors relate it to the Latin voice metalla. Even so, the opinion that the name comes from Mons Medulius has many supporters among experts.

 

Extraction method

In the environment that today is known as Las Médulas, there were a series of favorable circumstances for the extraction of gold: they were alluvial lands with gold dust; There was abundant water and enough slope to use it as hydraulic power; and there were gentle slopes towards the Sil for the drains.

The system used was the so-called ruina montium. The water from the mountain streams was channeled and dammed in the upper part of the farm; The mountain was pierced with a careful network of very steep galleries, releasing the water through them. The force of the water dismantled the mountain and dragged the gold-bearing lands to the washing places. The hydraulic system of the Médulas is the most spectacular of those known, due to the amount of water used and the length and large number of branches of its channels. Currently, this entire route is known, and can be visited in part with the company of a guide.

One of the many collections was made from the northeastern slope of Mount Teleno. At an altitude of 2000 meters, the snow accumulated and later, once converted into water, reached the Cabo River (a tributary of the Cabrera), which in turn fed the seven canals that, bordering the mountain, reached the farm's ponds. . These channels, whose total length is estimated at about 300 kilometers, have a slope of between 0.6 and 1%. The width is 1.28 meters, except in the curves, 1.60, and its depth is 90 centimeters. The construction of these canals, which in some sections run under the rock in the form of a tunnel, was, by far, the most difficult and expensive work of the exploitation.

Later, the water from the canals reached tanks built by leveling and excavating the land. The extracted earth was piled up around it, forming slopes. These tanks had gates to distribute the water.

 

Emergence of the landscape environment

Once the exploitation was abandoned in the 3rd century, the native vegetation once again took over the place: oaks, brooms, Carquesa, holm oaks and holm oaks. At the same time, the cultivation of the chestnut tree expanded, of which numerous specimens can be seen today in the park, some of them cataloged as centenary trees. All of this resulted in the emergence of a spectacular environment characterized by the whimsical shapes of the terrain, formed by reddish sands perfectly integrated with the vegetation.

Currently, the fauna of the area includes the wild boar, the roe deer, the wild cat, etc. As for birdlife, there are more than one hundred species, located mainly on the slopes of the Cabrera River. In the vicinity of Lake Carucedo, which tradition says was formed by the stagnation of the water used for exploitation, a variety of orchid grows whose flower simulates a bumblebee to attract insects and facilitate pollination. In the riverside forests, insectivorous birds stand out.

In 1997, UNESCO declared Las Médulas a World Heritage Site, including the main area of the gold mine and the Balouta, Valdebría and Yeres wastelands. The Thai delegation opposed the decision, considering that the site is the result of destructive human activity and that it was detrimental to the cause of environmental protection. Germany and Finland agreed with this position.

 

Points of interest

The entire site forms a cul-de-sac that is accessed by a path with a gradient of about one hundred meters that starts near the Fuente de la Tía Bibiana.

Valiñas Path (4 km)
La Cuevona
The enchanted
Reirigo Trail (5.5 km)
Perimeter path (5.7 km)
Path of the convents (4.5 km)
Orellán Viewpoint. The viewpoint is accessed from a path on the Valiñas path or along the perimeter.
Orellán Gallery. Visitable water gallery, about 100 meters long, pierced in the Médulas. It is accessed from the Orellán Viewpoint.

Route of the Medulillas
From the town of Orellán, where there was a Roman fort, a track leads to the Orellán viewpoint, which we can reach by car. From there the walk will be on foot bordering Mount Placias (1025 m a.s.l.) to Campo de la Braña, from where the path descends to the excavations of the Medulillas in the Reirigo Caves or the Cueva de la Chaira, more than 250 meters long. The path leads to the fork of Las Pedrices (name given to the "murias" stones), from where it returns to the town of Las Médulas. In addition, next to the same viewpoint there are some galleries that can be visited.