The City Council receives 18,000 euros of European funds through the Campoder association
Lorca City Council has received 18,000 euros of European funds through the Campoder association for the drafting of a Master Plan for the Mining, Industrial and Geological Heritage of the preserve ‘Happiness’, located in Barranco Hondo. The mayor, Diego José Mateos, and the manager of Campoder, Miguel Buendía, signed this Thursday the signature of the receipt of the subsidy
Mateos explained that with this document, whose drafting has a term of execution of 18 months, “we will be able to know what is the intervention that must be carried out and the sequence of it” for the recovery of the mining preserve abandoned for more than 60 years. years.
The sulfur mines began to be exploited in the Middle Ages, although their most intensive use occurred between 1850 and 1959. The municipality became the national leader in sulfur production and the Lorca reserve, in which 600 people worked, many of them children.
They extracted 5,000 tons of high-purity sulfur annually between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. It was one of the so-called ‘processing factories’, where the mercantile Azufres de Lorca SA was located, predecessor of others such as the Compañía Franco-Española de Azufres de Lorca, responsible for the exploitation between 1890 and 1930.
From that legendary mining past in the Sierra de Serrata, six industrial-style pavilions remain standing, in addition to the old wells, underground galleries and ovens used for refining sulfur. The idea of the City Council is to restore these spaces, musealize them and turn them into an interpretation center for the practice of mining in the city.
Mateos recalled that the mineral extractive activity was not only concentrated in Serrata, but also in other districts such as Almendricos – where a mining museum has been planned for years – with porphyry and bauxite operations in Zarzadilla de Totana, for which the recovery project of that legacy is even more ambitious.
He recalled that his party already demanded in 2018 the recovery of these constructions for their ethnographic value. Now, fulfilling that commitment, the Master Plan will establish an inventory and cataloging of the buildings and the actions that will be necessary to carry out for the recovery of the historical heritage, which is protected and private property.
Once the Master Plan has been drawn up, the City Council will resort to European ‘Next Generation’ funds, to the call for 1.5% Cultural from the Government of Spain or to the Feder Funds to be able to tackle the project, which will make it possible to expose the geological wealth of the area , where it is usual for crystals of sulfur, celestite, calcite or quartz to appear.
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