17 - Mirador de Fumanya

  Black fever

 Alt Berguedà smells of forest, mushrooms and clean air, but you can also smell a different vegetation. For millions of years they were trapped under the ground and were transformed into a curious black rock that burns and releases heat, lots of heat. This is also a land of coal. During the first third of the 20th century, Berguedà became the main mining district of Catalonia and one of the most important in Spain.

The coal crisis began in the 1960s and in 2007 the last mine was closed. In 1975, in an attempt to find new profitability, these open cast mines were exploited, at the foot of the Ensija mountain range. Ten years of mining left enormous wounds on the landscape, many of which are fortunately healed today, thanks to the restoration work carried out. However, they also revealed singular archaeological sites.

  Ancient herds

 A long time ago -more than sixty-five million years-, exactly on this location, some special herds walked on a muddy meadow. They were not sheep or cows, but rather Titanosaurus, sauropods that ate the vegetation, which millions of years later was to become coal- and has been the livelihood of so many mining families in Berguedà. Precisely these open cast coal mines that revealed the footprints -the ichnites- of those great animals. There are almost four thousand dinosaur footprints, some of which are 65 cm long by 45 cm wide.