Village
Municipality of the comarca of Valle de Alcudia, in the province of Ciudad Real, whose mercury mines, incorporated in perpetuity into the Crown of Castile in 1523 and leased to the German bankers Fugger for much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ceased extraction in 2002 and were inscribed by UNESCO in 2012 on the World Heritage list along with those of Idrija. Of that past there remain the Mercury Museum, housed in the 1941 warehouse of the Cerco de Buitrones, and the Royal Hospital of Miners of San Rafael, built between 1755 and 1773 and a pioneer in Spain in health care for workers, where José Parés y Franqués practised, author in 1778 of a pioneering text of occupational medicine.
Monument
The largest mercury mines in the world, worked from Roman times until 2003: as early as the days of Strabo, Vitruvius and Pliny, the cinnabar of Almadén was documented. The place name comes from the Arabic al-maʿdin, "the mine". Its management was in the hands of a state body from 1918 and, from 1982, of the public company Minas de Almadén y Arrayanes, which also administered until 1971 the Arrayanes mine, in the Linares mining district. The definitive halt of activity came on 23 July 2003, after years of crisis in the mercury market. In 2012 UNESCO listed them as a World Heritage Site together with those of Idrija (Slovenia) under the name Heritage of Mercury.
Monument
A museum complex that lets visitors go down 50 metres underground through 16th-century galleries, open to the public since 2006. It includes a visitor centre, a mining interpretation centre and a ride out on a mine train.
Monument
A bullring with a hexagonal plan, unique in the world, begun in 1752 and completed in 1765. Its outer perimeter houses 24 dwellings and the ring holds some 4,000 spectators; it was declared a Monumento Nacional (Spain's heritage designation in force until 1931) in 1979.
Monument
A hospital built between 1755 and 1773 on the initiative of the superintendent Francisco Javier de Villegas, a pioneer in Spain in professionalised health care for workers. It now houses the Miners' Museum and the historical archive.
Monument
Created by Royal Charter of Carlos III on 14 July 1777, it was the first School of Mines in Spain and the fourth in the world. The building opened in 1785 and worked as a teaching centre until 1973.
Monument
A prison built around 1754 by the engineer Silvestre Abarca to house convicts sentenced to forced labour in the mines. It remained in operation until 1800.
Monument
Housed in the old mercury store of the Cerco de Buitrones, a building of 1941. It brings together rooms on the geology and palaeontology of the area, interactive experiments on the properties of mercury and the room where the metal was weighed and packed.
Monument
The outer ensemble of the mining compound, made up of the monumental Carlos IV gateway and the 17th-century aludel furnaces used to distil cinnabar and obtain mercury.
Nature
A natural area of some 9,000 hectares located in the west of the province of Ciudad Real, shared by the municipalities of Almadén, Almadenejos and Alamillo, historically linked to the mercury mines as a supplier of firewood and pasture. Belonging to the State following its incorporation into the Crown in the last third of the 18th century, it is administered by the public company Mayasa and has been governed since 1913 by its own regulations; a law of 1981 established among its aims the development of agricultural, livestock and forestry use as part of the plan for the economic and social conversion of the Almadén region. Its fauna includes fallow deer, red deer, roe deer and wild boar, and it also serves as a refuge for the Spanish imperial eagle, the cinereous vulture, the black stork and the Iberian lynx.
Curiosity
The Almadén cinnabar deposit formed some 430 million years ago and has yielded roughly a third of all the mercury consumed by humanity, a figure matched by no other deposit on the planet.
Activity
The Fiestas de San Pantaleón are Almadén's summer patron-saint festivities, in the Valle de Alcudia (Ciudad Real), celebrated on 27 and 28 July in honour of this saint. The programme combines religious acts, bullfighting events in the municipality's hexagonal bullring and popular festivities that bring together residents and visitors.
Activity
The fiesta of the Virgen de la Mina is celebrated in Almadén (Ciudad Real) on 8 September, in honour of the patron saint of miners. In the evening the image is carried in procession escorted by miners dressed in their work clothes, helmet and miner's lamp as the only lighting, while the procession recites the Salve to the patron saint. The town venerates three images of her: in the chapel of the pozo de San Joaquín, in the Cerco de San Teodoro and in the parish of Santa María de las Estrellas. The day ends with a popular festivity, a performance by the Masa Coral de Almadén and fireworks.
Historical milestone
In 2012 Unesco inscribed the mercury mines of Almadén on the World Heritage list, in a candidacy shared with those of Idrija, in Slovenia. The dossier recognised two millennia of extraction and the preserved mining landscape.
Historical milestone
The fall in the price of mercury and the international restrictions on account of its toxicity led to the halt of extraction in 2002, after centuries of uninterrupted activity. The shafts were converted shortly afterwards into a mining park open to visitors.
Historical milestone
Incorporated in perpetuity into the Crown of Castile in 1523, the quicksilver mines were leased to the German bankers Fugger, the Fúcares, who worked them during a good part of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries against the credits granted to the monarchy.
Historical milestone
Alfonso VII wrested the comarca from Muslim rule in 1151 and in 1168 Alfonso VIII ceded the territory to count Nuño de Lara and to the Order of Calatrava. The cinnabar mines thus remained in the patrimony of the military order for centuries.
Historical milestone
During the First Carlist War, in 1836, Carlist bands attacked Almadén, whose quicksilver was one of the main sources of income of the Isabelline Treasury. The mining establishment was defended like any other military stronghold.
Historical milestone
Born in Mataró in 1720 and trained at the Sertorian University of Huesca, Josep Parés y Franqués was physician to the mining establishment of Almadén during the 18th century, where he described in detail hydrargyrism and the ailments of the mercury miners. His Catástrofe morboso de las Minas Mercuriales de la Villa de Almadén del Azogue (1778) is a pioneering text of occupational medicine in Spain, followed by the Apología de las Reales Minas de Almadén del Azogue y de sus mineros (1777) and the Descripción histórico-físico-médico-mineralógico-mercurial de las Reales Minas de azogue de la villa de Almadén (1785). He died in Almadén, the town to which he devoted his career, on 4 October 1798.
Historical milestone
The liberal politician Segismundo Moret, who would go on to preside over the Council of Ministers, obtained his first seat as deputy for the district of Almadén in 1863. The mining constituency had a weight of its own in nineteenth-century politics.