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Mining Sierra of Cartagena-La Unión

La Unión, Campo de Cartagena, Murcia

1 Villages · 9 Monuments · 4 Activities · 2 Curiosities · 3 Historical milestones · 2 Food and drink

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Mining Sierra of Cartagena-La Unión

Curiosity · La Unión, Campo de Cartagena, Murcia

Mining Sierra of Cartagena-La Unión

The Sierra Minera de Cartagena-La Unión stretches for 26 kilometres of coastline between Cartagena and Cabo de Palos, passing through La Unión, with its highest point on the cerro del Sancti Spíritus (431 m), near Portmán. Worked for its silver and lead mines since Antiquity, it attracted Carthaginians and Romans, who made Carthago Nova one of the most flourishing cities of Hispania until the exhaustion of the deposits led to its abandonment at the end of the 1st century. Activity resumed in the 19th century, and after the Civil War it moved to open-pit mining, with serious environmental problems, until it ceased in 1990. Declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 2009, it preserves hundreds of listed features — headframes, chimneys, washing plants, powder magazines — that bear witness to this process.

Photo: Nanosanchez (Public domain)

What to see and do in La Unión