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| The Muelle de Riotinto was restored in 2003 by the Huelva Town Hall |
Arising out of the midst of the surrounding greenery,
the giant opencast mines of Rio Tinto create a surreal, almost lunar
landscape. The removal of layer upon layer of soil and rock, in
the search for iron ore, copper, silver and a host of other mineral
ores, has tinted this part of the world in hues of dusty pink, brown,
yellow, red and grey. So great is the scale of operations, that
the depression created resembles a man-made crater that measures
several kilometres across. From the edge of the 'crater', a giant
space opens up before you, and the trucks at work far below appear
toy-sized when in reality most are the size of a house.
Walls of terraced rock, streaked with the unusual
colours of mineral ores create the impression of a natural amphitheatre
of gargantuan proportions, that could easily be mistaken for the
set of a Star Wars movie.
Rio Tinto is, however, more than an isolated cavity
on the earth's surface. Its growth has consumed not only mountains
and valleys but even entire villages, whose populations had to be
resettled in specially built towns nearby. Named after the river
which flows through the region-itself named for the reddish streaks
that colour its water-Rio Tinto has become a landscape within a
landscape. The unearthed minerals give the soil and waters of the
region odd, otherworldly shades of blue, green, yellow, red and
brown, so it is not unusual to see bright orange or green rivulets
trickling past. The predominant ores, however, are the ferrous ones,
which oxidise when they come into contact with the air and colour
land and river alike in shades of reddish brown. Even as far as
Niebla, roughly 50 kilometres to the south-east,
the waters of the Rio Tinto still flow past the town's ancient fortified
walls in an eerie trickle of blood-red.
Lunar landscapes at the Rio Tinto Mines
Reputed to be the oldest mines in the world, Rio
Tinto has a particularly rich history. Their mineral wealth was
already legendary in ancient times. According to myth, these are
the fabled mines of King Solomon, and a section
of the area is still known as Cerro Salomón today. The nearby
villages of Zalamea la Vieja (now called Nerva)
and Zalamea la Real are also named after the biblical
king. It was tales of the Iberian Peninsula's mineral wealth that
drew Phoenician merchants to its shores, laying the foundations
for a succession of Greek, Carthaginian and Roman invasions. The
Rio Tinto mines they worked so intensively were among the most prized
rewards that control of Iberia yielded.
For all this, the region was inexplicably abandoned
after the Roman era and in time was all but lost to collective memory,
until it was rediscovered in 1556. It was, however, to take until
1724 for the mines to be reopened, and even then frustration and
inefficiency dogged their exploitation. Fed up with this situation,
the Spanish government finally sold the mines to a British syndicate
in 1871 for a sum well below their real value. In true Anglo-Saxon
style, the company's British managers soon had the mines running
at full steam, making this one of the most important sources of
copper and sulphur in the world. Also true to form was the way in
which they built Bella Vista, a purpose-built village
for British employees only. Known as the 'colonia inglesa', the
British style houses, neatly trimmed gardens, tennis lawns and social
club of Bella Vista can still be visited. This 'British' village
in the middle of the Andalusian countryside also features a Presbyterian
Church and mining museum. Several kilometres away is the Spanish
town of Rio Tinto, built to replace an older settlement that was
swallowed up by the mine's expansion.
In its heyday, the Rio Tinto Mining Company was
quite an innovator. The football pitch and golf course built here
were among the first on the European continent, and the half-timbered
bungalows built for company employees at the Punta Umbria, on the
Huelva coast, are the forerunners of the modern Costas.
A similar impact was made in the City
of Huelva, which flourished as Rio Tinto's export harbour. The
Rio Tinto pier remains one of the city's greatest architectural
monuments, along with the so-called barrio ingles, a small residential
district built for British company workers. The superb archaeological
section of the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes has a collection
of findings from the Rio Tinto area.
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