Els Esterregalls, the gold rush of the Romans

* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
27 May 2023 Saturday 04:53
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Els Esterregalls, the gold rush of the Romans

* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia

On the N-260 road that connects Puigerdà with La Seu d'Urgell is the town of All, which belongs to the Girona municipality of Isóvol.

We are located in Baixa Cerdanya. Nearby passes the Duran river, which rises in the Pyrenees, at the Bressola peak and belongs to the Ebro watershed and is a tributary of the Segre river.

A short distance from the town of All we find some curious structures of geological interest, called Esterregalls, which I have portrayed for Las Fotos de los Lectores de La Vanguardia.

The composition of the terrain is quartz, slate, zircon gold particles or magnetite. Well, it turns out that the ancient Romans were already familiar with the gold of the Pyrenees.

So much so that hydraulic methods were used to extract this precious material in the second century BC in this area of ​​the Pyrenees.