8. Fumanya Dinosaurs and Cercs Coal Mine Museum

Recommended route: at the Coll de la Trapa we turn off to follow the road that goes up to the Parc de Palomera. We pass the park, we also pass the Coll de Pradell and arrive at Lake Tumí, where the Tumí Site is located. It is a point of high geological and paleontological interest. You can see the footsteps of the dinosaurs on the wall !! The existence of an artificial lake as a result of the old mining operations in the area, give the place an added landscape interest.

We continue along the road and when we find a turnoff we turn left, towards Vallcebre, a few meters later there is the Pla de la Barraca car park and very close to the Mirador of Vallcebre. To get there, you have to walk about 100 meters and cross 2 small tunnels, which have their origin in an old cable car built in the mid-twentieth century to transport coal. It offers a privileged view of the whole valley, with the village in the middle, the Cadí and Moixeró mountains to the north, and the Catllaràs to the east.

We turn tail, return to the previous turnoff and now continue to the left to reach the Fumanya Dinosaurs Interpretation Center. This center is the last phase of the star project of the Mining Route Consortium. The project revolves around the open-pit mining of Fumanya, active between 1975 and 1986, which uncovered an impressive paleontological site with more than 3,500 dinosaur footprints over 65 million years old.

The relationship between dinosaurs and coal is direct: they disappeared 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous, which is the period in which lignite was formed and in which the geomorphological formation of the Pyrenees verticalizes what had been a fluvial plain.This is the extraordinary relationship between geology, mining and paleontology; between the Pyrenees, dinosaurs and coal.

The Fumanya site, in the municipality of Fígols, was declared a Cultural Asset of National Interest (BCIN) in 2014, and is part of the candidacy that aspires to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site, together with other sites of ‘icnites of the Iberian Peninsula. More info

Continuing along the same road we will leave for Sant Corneli, where we can visit the Museum of the Coal Mines of Cercs.

Cercs Mines Museum. Travel to the heart of the earth!

The Museu de les Mines de Cercs, dedicated monographically to coal, is a museum of technique and history and, at the same time, wants to be an interpretation center to explain and make known the multiple and close relations between this fossil fuel. and the geological, landscape, economic and human environment of the Alt Berguedà.

A mining train takes visitors inside the Sant Romà mine. The route, which consists of 450 meters inside the gallery, allows us to relive in the original place what the work inside the mine was like. More info