Report - The Coal Valley (Power plant, mines & more) - Spain (January 2022)

[Witt]

amazing report! the scale of the place o_O

 

[Speed]

It's all in Belgium you know!

 

[tweek]

I love this to be honest. Just looks a really nice day out. I also like that valley sketch at the beginning of the report.

 

[RustyJohn]

Thats awesome stuff, love it. I remember once driving up from Barcelona to Andorra (nearly 20 years ago!) and surprised to see the scars of the civil war still apparent in places.. but then it was only 60-70 years since it happened at the time!

Then you most likely went through this valley and passed right next to the power plant, it's actually on the only road from Barcelona to Andorra! About the civil war scars, I guess it's not so much about this rather than the general depopulation of rural areas in the 70's-80's, but yes, there's quite a bit of forgotten places on the way to the Pyrenees! Hope you enjoyed your trip down memory lane

 

[RustyJohn]

It's all in Belgium you know!

We southeners always feel inferior you know! :')

 

[tumbles]

Then you most likely went through this valley and passed right next to the power plant, it's actually on the only road from Barcelona to Andorra! About the civil war scars, I guess it's not so much about this rather than the general depopulation of rural areas in the 70's-80's, but yes, there's quite a bit of forgotten places on the way to the Pyrenees! Hope you enjoyed your trip down memory lane

I kinda wondered if it was on the road but it's so long ago now. I wasn't meant to be driving but my sister broke her wrist on the slopes leaving a rather nervous 21 year old having to drive (first time abroad) back from Andorra to central Barca. The C-16 was the easy bit! I have always wanted to do it again in summer times.. maybe I need to get looking at those easyjet flights..

 

[RustyJohn]

I kinda wondered if it was on the road but it's so long ago now. I wasn't meant to be driving but my sister broke her wrist on the slopes leaving a rather nervous 21 year old having to drive (first time abroad) back from Andorra to central Barca. The C-16 was the easy bit! I have always wanted to do it again in summer times.. maybe I need to get looking at those easyjet flights..

OMG you have good memory, the road passing under the power plant is the C-16 indeed! No joking around, in a couple years this region will be quite more developed, now's the perfect time for someone to explore this part of Spain.

 

[RustyJohn]

I love this to be honest. Just looks a really nice day out. I also like that valley sketch at the beginning of the report.

Glad you liked it, that's the report I was having doubts as about how to narrate it, thanks for looking it up!

 

[mookster]

Spain really is an untapped garden of exploring, I saw so much stuff on the longgggg drive back north from the very southern coast to Calais last September but with no time couldn't stop sadly. Everyone who travels to France seems to just sort of stop halfway down the country (usually at Luxembourg on the way into Belgium!) almost as if they are worried about heading further south for some reason - like they might get told off for doing so.

Quality thread and location, one I'll have to look into stopping at if I make it out to Spain again this year...

 

[deepdiver]

brilliant report and top class photos, i would advise getting gas detecter for you next u/g explor

 

[Terminal Decline]

Great report! The location of the power station perched on a cliff like that is incredible - would be a shame if it were to be completely erased from the landscape. Pity so much of it has been stripped out, but even seeing it from the outside must be quite something. Would be nice to see more stuff from Spain, there's a load of small collierys in the northern region which have closed in recent years.

 

[RustyJohn]

Great report! The location of the power station perched on a cliff like that is incredible - would be a shame if it were to be completely erased from the landscape. Pity so much of it has been stripped out, but even seeing it from the outside must be quite something. Would be nice to see more stuff from Spain, there's a load of small collierys in the northern region which have closed in recent years.

True about the collieries in the north! Most of them are to be re-developed/demolished by 2025, some of them are already tourist sites... as @mookster was saying, Spain is an untapped garden for exploring, and now it feels like the perfect time to go to those places because the economic crisis from a few years ago + covid + general mismanagement of the country has left everyting on pause.

 

[The_Raw]

Another great report @RustyJohn. Definitely worth getting yourself a gas meter to delve a bit further into those mines

 

[Covanto]

PART 1: Intro & Power Plant

Me and my exploring partner were thinking something along the lines of ''Shit man, if we wanna see some epic places we're gonna have to travel to France or Belgium or something...''
but as the saying goes: as above so below! It seems that Catalonia had its own little coal-mining empire, now laying forgotten in some dark valley near the Pyrenees.
There's so much to see that I could write 3 different reports but I want to show the place as a whole because it was all part of one huge infrastructure, here's a drawing of the valley in its golden age:

So it worked more or less like that: There were 3 mines in the mountain, with the miners' housing and workshops near, coal was then carried down the valley through a tramway, arriving at the power station. Mining had started in the area around the 18th century but it wasn't until 1893 that a rich industrialist bought all of the mining rights and planned this big mining operation. For you UK people, it's worth noting that this guy, although Spanish, had been born and raised in England, where he studied engineering and visited some mines. In 1908 the King of Spain visited the region and was so impressed by the coal-mining complex that he awarded the title of Count to the industrialist. The last part of the infrastructure to be built was the power plant, active from 1929 until 1970.

About the explore... there's so much we wanted to tick off of our list, and this location provided it all: infiltration of a semi-live site, and some 'serious' mine exploring (more on that later...)
So our day started down the valley, after finding a path that seemed to lead to the power station we saw some 'hidden' 4x4s in the woods and thought it was security and our morning was screwed, but after approaching the cars scared as hell we realized it was just a bunch of old hunters...so in we go!

That's the old power station, behind it you can see the little palace of the Count and on the top left, the mining colonies where the mines are. We actually didn't explore the old power station because we were about to become very busy with...THIS!

Surprise! This massive power plant also ran on coal and was built in 1970 to replace the old one, in 2011 it closed because it was past its scheduled working hours. After being mothballed for a few years, dismantling started in 2020 but is now stopped because the government found out that the contractors were taking out more iron than they were declaring on paper or some dodgy business...
We didn't know if it was gonna be doable but we just walked right in...! It's quite noticeable how the dismantling stopped mid-process, some building are already stripped bare while others still have all the machinery inside, here's some shots we took roaming around:

The effort they made trying to secure access to the cooling tower was pathetic: at the base of the stairs there was a knee-high fence...with a padlock! :') Then a heavy steel door which opened with no issues.

I know some of you despise people shots in a report, but damn, let me rejoice in the fact that I'm in the middle of a fuckin' coal plant cooling tower!

Disclaimer: I've edited some of the pics in the report, only in cases where lighting was really shitty, at least like this you can see something...

After getting inside the cooling tower, which was our main goal for the power plant in case we had to do a quick get-in-get-out, we relaxed as we realized there was absolutely nobody on the site.

I won't bother you too much with interior pics, the offices were huge but they all mostly looked like this: a mixture of original paperwork, demonstration banners and stuff from the closing days, and some more paperwork and stuff from the dismantling crew. Even though it was messy, everything was pretty intact!

What's left of the control panel for the power plant, shame this one wasn't intact!

The basement was something else, it was literally untouched, with god-knows-what chemical residues lurking inside this tanks.

Hey, an intact control panel! We'll have to do with that!

The generator hall, the dismantling crew had done quite a lot of work here, with one of the generators gone and the other in a sorry state:

Next to the hall were the 'executive' offices, with nice wooden panels and doors. Upon exploring the rooms, and to put an end to the power plant exploration, we found this, quite funny what they tried to do:

With our first location of the day done, we headed onto the next one, following in part 2!

Incredible post

 

[RustyJohn]

A little update on the place! We went there yesterday to celebrate our first year of 'serious exploring'... It was a bit sad to see that the power plant is going downhill quickly... There was a lot more of graffiti, broken glass & smashed doors... still, we still hadn't found the lab, which is pretty intact with some cool machines still there (will upload the pics when I get home!).
Now excuse me for the quality of the next pics, they're taken with the phone and I was more concerned about my safety than taking good pics... It wasn't our plan to go underground, but two things happened: we found the ventilation drift to the coal mine in part 3 of this thread, and due to the weather conditions, air inside the mine was surprisingly good yesterday (remember these are coal mines we're talking about). So we walked the full 2 miles of the main adit and started finding good stuff... We found a branch that led us to an image of Santa Barbara (protector of the miners) at the base of a steep stairway to an upper level. Also the remains of a minecart, and we know for sure that if we continue, there's still rooms with intact equipment... But we decided we weren't going to push forward until we get a gas detector.

On another note... This mountain is not just full of mines, there's also a whole underground railway system which was used to transport the coal. It is said to be more than 200 kms long,
and since now we've seen all of the power station and are saving the rest of the mine for when we get proper gear, we started to try to find a possible entrance to the railway system...
We found a tunnel capped off with sand but diggable, and again sorry for the pic, but this was a nice find: the main 'station' were coal was dumped onto the trains through this massive chutes:

That was just a quick update, but will return to better document all our latest finds in the area!