Almadén () is a town and municipality in the Spanish province of Ciudad Real, within the autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha. The town is located at 4° 49' W and 38° 46' N and is 589 meters (1,932 ft) above sea level. Almadén in the Sierra Morena. The name Almadén is from the , 'the mineral' or 'lode', and so by extension, the place where these are excavated, 'the mine'. Originally a Roman, and later, a Moorish mining settlement when taken from the Visigoths, the town was captured by the Christians in 1151 under king Alfonso VII and given to the Knights of the Order of Calatrava.

History of the mines

thumb|left|Almadén mine

The geology of the area is characterised by volcanism.

Almadén is home to the world's greatest reserves of cinnabar, a mineral associated with recent volcanic activity, from which mercury is extracted. From antiquity, cinnabar was used to make the pigment vermillion and this is the likely end-use of the mineral extraction of Almadén of the Roman and Visigothic periods, for which times historical records are limited. In the Islamic era, furnaces capable of extracting mercury from the cinnabar were installed. With the more advanced expertise available to the alchemists of Al-Andalus, the mines of Almadén exported mercury throughout the entire Mediterranean basin. They were important enough to be described in the learned literature of the day.

The Fugger family of Augsburg, two German bankers, administered the mines during the 16th and 17th centuries in return for loans to the Spanish government. Mercury became very valuable in the Americas in the mid-16th century due to the introduction of amalgamation, a process that uses mercury to extract metals from gold and silver ore. The demand for mercury grew, and so did the town's importance as a center of mining and industry. Most of the mercury produced at this time was sent to Seville, then to the Americas.

Daily life

A steady run of complaints to the king in the 1580s led to an investigation of convict living conditions at Almadén in 1593. The investigation was conducted by royal commissioner and author Mateo Alemán and was based largely on convict interviews.

In 1835, during the First Carlist War, the mine was leased indefinitely to the bank of N M Rothschild & Sons. The price paid was high, but one of the Rothschild family firms had previously purchased the quicksilver mine in Idrija (now in Slovenia) from Austria; thus the firm had a monopoly on quicksilver, until the discovery of New Almaden in California. Volume was expanded and the metal sold at a substantial markup returning a substantial profit to both Spain and the firm. Spain reclaimed the mine in 1863.

In 1916, a special council was created to operate the mines, introducing new technology and safety improvements. A record production of 82,000 mercury flasks () was reached in 1941, just after the Spanish Civil War, using prisoners of war as forced labor. The price for mercury decreased from a peak of US$571 per flask in 1965 to US$121 in 1976, making economic planning difficult. In 1981, the Spanish government created the company to operate the mine. In 2000, the mines closed due to the fall of the price of mercury on the international market, caused by falling demand. However, Almadén still has one of the world's largest mercury resources.

Climate

Almadén has a mediterranean climate (Csa on the Köppen climate classification), bordering on a cold semi-arid climate (Köppen: BSk) and a hot semi-arid climate (Köppen: BSh). The city has mild winters, although temperatures can sometimes drop below on some nights. Summers are very hot, with mean maximum temperatures often above and days above are common. Almadén holds the record for the highest monthly average temperature ever recorded in Spain and the Iberian Peninsula: in July 2022, with a mean maximum of and a minimum of . Precipitation is generally scarce, with summer being the driest season and the remaining seasons having similar but scarce precipitation values. The annual temperature range is high, exceeding .

See also

  • Huancavelica, the other major source of mercury in the Spanish Empire
  • The New Almaden Quicksilver Mine in Santa Clara County, California

References

Further reading

  • , official website of the mines