Site - Barroso Ecomuseum Interpretive Center of the Borralha Mines, Borralha

The awareness of the need to safeguard a vast industrial and mining heritage, in its multiple aspects, led the Municipality of Montalegre and the Barroso Ecomuseum to delineate a project, capable of assuming the responsibility of defining a local development strategy. Thus was born in 2015 the Barroso Ecomuseum - Interpretive Center of the Borralha Mines that aims to support the visit to the various infrastructures created during the operation of the mines extracting wolfram (1902-1986). The Group D (reception area), the Foundry, the House of Compressors and the Archives, recently-musealized buildings and where the documentary and geological assets are located. The existence of these mines, ex-libris of the Industrial and Mining Heritage, constituted an enormous geological / lithological wealth. The mineralization of Couto Mineiro da Borralha occurs in seams that can be grouped in two main types: I) quartz filaments with mineralization of volframite, scheelite and sulphides; And II) mineralized aplitopegmatites with cassiterite. The two pedestrian routes, currently already signposted, make known the entire mining area.