The Mercury Heritage is a joint declaration of the towns of Almadén and Idrija, in Spain and Slovenia respectively. Both towns have two of the largest mercury mines in the world, exploited for centuries.
In 2012 they were declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
The Almadén mines also gather in their surroundings places related to their mining history, such as the Retamar castle, religious buildings or traditional wells.
In Idrija there are warehouses and infrastructure related to mercury, miners' houses or a theater.
Both sites are an important testimony of the intercontinental trade of mercury, which will have important exchanges between Europe and America for centuries.
Almadén, located in the province of Ciudad Real, began mining before the arrival of the Romans to the peninsula.
Around 1555, amalgamation methods were initiated, producing a mixture mixing mercury with another metal, to obtain silver. From that moment on, the flow of mercury between the Almadén and Idrija mines and America began and with it the reciprocal exchanges of techniques to improve the exploitations.
Both are the largest mercury mines in the world and were operational until a few years ago.
Throughout history, these mines have brought the two nations closer together, favoring economic, technological and cultural exchanges.
The stamp shows a detail of the small castle of the Almadén mines, a structure located on a vertical shaft whose function is to support the pulleys at a sufficient height above the Parish Church of San Sebastián, which presents the curiosity, perhaps due to its relation with the mine, of having the headwall facing west, instead of east, as required by the canonical norm.
