Sierra Minera de Cartagena-La Unión

Sierra Minera de Cartagena-La Unión is a mountainous formation that extends along 26 km of coastline from the city of Cartagena in the west to Cape Palos in the east, through the municipality of La Unión, in the Region of Murcia in Spain. Its maximum elevation is located on the Sancti Spíritus hill near Portmán, at 431 m altitude. This mountain range was intensely exploited for its silver and lead mines and other metallic minerals in ancient times. The control over these mining resources was one of the main causes of the establishment of the Carthaginians in southern Spain and the subsequent Roman occupation. The prosperity generated by mining made the city of Carthago Nova, now Cartagena, one of the most flourishing in Roman Hispania, until the end of the 1st century, due to the depletion of the best deposits, along with the scarce Roman technology, it was abandoned. The mines were not exploited again until the 19th century, when new industrial technologies made mineral production in the Sierra de Cartagena profitable again, and there was a new mining and related industries boom. After the Spanish Civil War, extensive open-pit mining was introduced, which caused serious environmental problems until mining activities ceased definitively in 1990. As a consequence of this long historical process of industrial exploitation, the landscape of the Sierra de Cartagena-La Unión is mar

Location: Spain.

Mountain range data from Wikidata (CC0). Elevation is the height of the highest peak.