Soloviejo Mines, Almonaster la Real, Huelva, Andalusia, Spaini

Regional Level Types
Soloviejo Mines	Group of Mines
Almonaster la Real	Municipality
Huelva	Province
Andalusia	Autonomous Community
Spain	Country

Currently not operational Manganese deposit northwest of the Rio Tinto mining complex.

Description from http://www.igme.es/internet/patrimonio/geosites/chapter_04_sgfg.pdf (Chapter 4, THE IBERIAN PYRITE BELT by Tornos, F., López Pamo, E., Sánchez España, F.J.; slightly edited):

The mine of Soloviejo (Ramírez Copeiro and Maroto, 1985) was the biggest of a high number of small manganese deposits in the area. Currently, none of them is worked, but at the end of the XIX century, Spain was the largest producer of manganese in the world, with more than 2/3 of the global production. Most of this production came from the lenses of manganese and jasper oxides interbedded within the upper part of the purple slate of the Volcano-Sedimentary Complex. These stratabound manganese deposits are related to oxidizing environments and low-temperature exhalites, spatially and genetically independent from the massive sulphides.
The mineralization and associated jasper are hosted by purple slate underneath felsic volcanoclastic rocks and slates below the Culm Group. This level has channeled an important shear deformation, so deformation structures, breccias and quartz veins are very common. This deposit includes a primary mineralization dominant in depth, consisting of fine-grained rhodonite and rhodochrosite, with abundant sericite and chlorite replacing or interbedded within the jasper. The supergene alteration is economically more interesting and includes variable proportions of pyrolusite, romanechite, lithiophorite, vernadite, cryptomelane, todorokite and hematite (Jorge, 2000), which are especially abundant in the later fractures.

_________________________________

During a field trip in 1989 most of the described minerals could be found, the deposit yielded excellent quartz var rock crystals up to 20 cm and botryoidal manganese oxides (romanechite). The open pit is labeled in google maps La Joya o Soloviejo.

_________________________________


Group of mines that consists of the following nine concessions: nº 32 “Nuestra Señora del Rosario”, nº 744 “La Rapiña”, nº 756 “La Joya”, nº 808 “La Grulla”, nº 874 “San Francisco de Asís”, nº 6095 “San Francisco”, nº 12777 “San Antonio”, nº 12781 “Consuelo”, nº 13992 “Ampliación a Consuelo”. The collection specimens could be likely collected in La Joya Mine.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References