Cave of El Soplao
Cueva de El Soplao
Interesting facts
- El Soplao is the first place where stromatolites made of manganese oxides were found forming inside a cave, and they may help explain Precambrian stromatolites.
- Uranium dating puts the cave's bacterial stromatolites at about a million years old, while the formations growing on top of them are 400,000 to 500,000 years old.
- In 2008 a major amber deposit with trapped insects from about 110 million years ago was found roughly three kilometres from the cave.
- One amber find near the cave is a tiny lacewing larva, Hallucinochrysa diogenesi, wearing a basket of fern hairs as camouflage, much like some living lacewing larvae.
- By 2010 surveys had mapped nearly 20 km of natural passages and about 28 km of connected mine workings, reaching a depth of over 400 metres.
- The Gorda Gallery, meaning 'fat', earned its name from the feeling of smallness it gave one of the speleologists who explored it.
- The Camp Gallery is named after the research camp set up there during the first expeditions, and its flowstones are stained red and white by minerals.
Why it is worth it
El Soplao, in the hills of western Cantabria, is a cave of ornament rather than size: its galleries are crowded with helictites, slender eccentric formations that twist sideways and upward in apparent defiance of gravity, together with translucent curtains of calcite, giant stalagmites and fields of cave pearls. It is widely regarded as one of the richest caves in Spain for the variety and quality of its formations.
The cave was found by accident by miners working the lead and zinc deposits of the Sierra de Arnero, and their tunnels cut through its natural passages. Miners called such karst cavities soplaos, after the strong draughts of air that blew through them, and the name stuck. For years the galleries were used for extracting and storing ore from the La Florida mine; after the mining ended they were left largely forgotten until cavers of the Speleo Club Cántabro began exploring them in 1975 and revealed their geological value. The government of Cantabria opened the cave to the public on 1 July 2005. Visitors enter, fittingly, aboard a small mine train, and the route begins in an old mine gallery. The surveyed system, natural passages and connected mine workings together, runs to many kilometres, of which only a part is open to visitors. The rock is dolomite of Early Cretaceous age, impregnated with lead and zinc ores, and the Spanish geological survey has proposed the La Florida deposit and El Soplao cave as a geosite of international importance.
The galleries carry names given by the first explorers in the 1980s. The Gallery of the Ghosts, some 350 metres long and up to 35 metres wide, takes its name from the pale stalagmites that rise from its floor like figures in white sheets. The Gorda Gallery, one of the largest by volume and the first seen on entering, has a ceiling bristling with calcite helictites. In the Cauliflower and Forest galleries, stalactites and stalagmites merge into columns, and traces of an ancient earthquake can be seen. The Genesis Gallery, more than 160 metres long and about 30 metres high, owes its name to the range of colours left by mineral salts. Research in and around the cave has studied Cretaceous amber deposits and recognised underground stromatolites formed by manganese-oxidising bacteria.
Getting there
El Soplao lies at about 540 metres above sea level in the Sierra de Arnero, on the boundary of the municipalities of Rionansa, Valdáliga and Herrerías in western Cantabria, inland from San Vicente de la Barquera. The nearest larger town is Torrelavega, about 30 km away, and the Cantabrian motorway (A-8) runs along the coast to the north. Seve Ballesteros-Santander Airport (SDR) is about 50 km away.
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From the encyclopaedia
El Soplao is a cave located in the municipalities of Rionansa, Valdáliga and Herrerías in Cantabria, Spain. It is considered unique for the quality and quantity of geological formations (speleothems) in its 17 miles length, 6 of which are open to the public. In it are formations such as helictites and draperies. Its formation dates back to the Mesozoic, in particular the Cretaceous period 240 million years ago. The entrance is at 540 metres in the Sierra Soplao Arnero.
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