Location: 20 km from Ponferrada, El Bierzo Map
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.