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Mines of Varilongo

Santa Comba, Xallas, A Coruña

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Mines of Varilongo

Curiosity · Santa Comba, Xallas, A Coruña

The Varilongo mines opened in 1914 in the parish of Santa Sabiña, in Santa Comba, to extract iron and quartz at first; from 1941 wolfram was mined there, and during the Second World War the mine came to be run by the German authorities. After several changes of ownership —from José Parga Moure to the Grupo Fierros de Madrid and, in 1981, to French capital under Coparex Minera—, the operation was mechanised and in the 1980s it became the largest wolfram mine in Europe, with 250,000 tonnes of concentrate and nearly 20,000 of tin in 1984. It closed in 1985 due to the fall in the price of wolfram, after cutting its workforce from 1,700 to 115 workers between 1967 and 1981. In 2016 the writer Carmen Blanco Ramos devoted a book to its history.

Photo: Braisgesto (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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