The City Council and the Community invest 2.5 million to value the heritage of the mountains
A humble hall of the cultural center Asensio Sáez de La Unión gave birth to the Mining Museum in 1986, which was a milestone in the preservation of the historical-cultural heritage of nearly two millennia of extractive activity in the Sierra Minera de Cartagena-La Unión. From the first moment there was awareness of the need to dignify the facilities for such a legacy. After two provisional headquarters in the old Liceo de Obreros (2001-2013) and a local of the Town Hall itself (2013 to date), the museum now has its final location: a new symbiotic building that has preserved part of the facades of the Liceo de Obreros and also of the hydraulic floor of some of its rooms.
The museum is officially inaugurated this Friday, at 12 noon, in an act that will continue in the afternoon with the presentation of a didactic classroom in honor of Mariano Muelas Espinosa, the first director of the museum, and a recital by the cantaora Esther Merino, Lámpara Minera 2022, which will be accompanied on guitar by Álvaro Mora, Bordón Minero that same year.
The investment in this infrastructure was around 2.5 million euros, financed by the Ministry of Culture and the City Council of La Unión. It is a modest-sized building, measuring 1,765 square meters, consisting of two floors and a basement, with offices, a warehouse, several exhibition rooms and an auditorium-function hall with capacity for more than 200 people. The civil works project was prepared by the architect José Manuel Chacón, and the adaptation of the space as a museum was carried out by Ángel Luis Rocamora. “This work aims to break the classic object inside a showcase, harmonizing architectural and scenic elements to improve interaction with the visitor, within a modern conception of museography,” explains Rocamora. “That you feel inside a mine”, he adds, along a linear route of more than 70 meters of permanent exhibition. The main access to the building is located in a new area facing northeast, on Jacinto Conesa street, although the original entrance from the Liceo square is also maintained.
For this new adventure, the City Council appointed the municipal archivist, Gonzalo Pagán, as director, who defines the museum as “an essential stop for history lovers; a unique experience to see first-hand the importance that the mining industry has had in this municipality for more than 2,000 years”.
the last winch
The main lobby of the museum houses the great heritage jewel of the Sierra Minera, the last existing winch in the Iberian Peninsula, which was restored after the asset was transferred by the Portmán Golf company from its location in the old Emilia quarry. The winch was a mechanism for the extraction of water or minerals, moved by animals, prior to the metal headframes. It was declared an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC) in 2018.
“Like a descent into the mine for the visitor, with a musealized path to the basement,” says the museum’s director, the tour is structured around five areas, in which the great collection that the museum treasures is exhibited , made up of more than 300 objects linked to mining-metallurgical activity in the 19th and 20th centuries, and around 200 minerals, both from the Sierra Minera de Cartagena-La Unión and from other points on the Iberian Peninsula.
The permanent title of the museum is ‘From the underground world to the open sky’, in reference to the two forms of mineral extraction that were carried out in the Sierra. In the space ‘Inside the mine’, you can see the work that was taking place: the shoring of the galleries, the start-up, the extraction, the loading and the hauling of the ore to the facilities on the surface. For its part, open-pit mining reached levels of production never seen before, so much so that in the 70s of the last century in La Unión and Cartagena 60% of the Spanish galena (lead) was manufactured, and 20% of other minerals such as pyrite (iron) or splende (zinc). However, the environmental cost was enormous and for this reason the great modifications of the landscape are shown in photographs, such as the silting up of mining waste suffered by the Bay of Portmán. The museum’s audiovisual material explains what the bay was like before the disaster, the operation of the Roberto laundry, the spills and the struggle of the people of Portmán and La Unión to regenerate the bay.
After many troubles (the project suffered years of delays because it had to be tendered up to three times and more than 200,000 euros had to be paid to remove part of the rubble when traces of polluting metals were found in it), “the museum is already underway ; It is a great joy for the people of Union, “said the mayor, Pedro López Milán.
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