Gold Rush and Enjoy the Silence are the same photography work carried out in the village of Rodalquilar, province of Almeria, Spain. The images shown in Gold Rush are exclusively the rest of the gold mines and their facilities, while the images shown in Enjoy the Silence are the remains of the mining village.
Landscape of great geological interest strongly modified by mining activity. Since the Middle Ages, and probably since the Roman occupation of the Iberian Peninsula, the Rodalquilar area was the object of great interest for the extraction of alkaline sulphates for the manufacture of alum, which it was an essential product for the textile industry and leather tanning. Metal mining for the beneficiation of Pb, Zn, and Ag began in the 19th century. The discovery of gold in 1883 represented a substantial change in the economy of the area. The mining-industrial facilities of the Abellan Mine constitute one of the vestiges linked to the beginning of the gold rush in the region.
Gold mining in Rodalquilar generated a cumulative production of seven tons, most of which was extracted from Cerro del Cinto. The origin of the mineralizations is associated with the interaction of hydrothermal fluids with volcanic rock. Metallogenetic processes also gave rise to intense alterations in these rocks. The excellent exposure of one and the other make Rodalquilar a world example for the study of high sulfurization gold deposits.
At the end of the 19th century, a serious crisis struck the mining industry in the area, dedicated mainly to the extraction of lead and silver. The solution to this crisis appears in the same veins where these metals were exploited, and that is that in the year 1883 gold was discovered in the " Las Ninas " mine, located 1 kilometer from the village of Rodalquilar. Business failures in the attempts to benefit from gold will continue, until in 1931 an English company managed to obtain it at the foot of the mine, working successfully until the Civil War broke out in 1936. In the year 1943, the State, after having seized the mines, began to exploit them through the public company ADARO, which, among other objectives, undertook the assembly in 1956 of a gold-bearing quartz treatment facility using the cyanidation method. This facility, with American-made machinery, was located in the northern area of the mining village, taking advantage of the existing infrastructure and water supply services.
The mineral extracted in the nearby galleries and quarries { aquifer quartz } was transported to the hopper. It was conveyed by conveyor belts to the two crushing towers, where the material, mixed with water, was ground to a fine grain size. Next, the resulting slurry passed to the thickening tank, where it lost part of the water. In the next phase, the pulp obtained was passed through 3 agitator tanks, where sodium cyanide was added, to convert the gold to a liquid state. The cyanide and gold mixture passed to 4 washing tanks, where it was stirred and aerated to obtain the gold-rich solution. The sterile pulp was sent to the currently sealed dump. The solution that contained the gold passed to the precipitation building where it was mixed with zinc dust and was subjected to different treatments that culminated in obtaining molten gold in ingots.
In the decade of the 50s, the mining works centered on the Cerro del Cinto. It is the beginning of the period of maximum splendor of Rodalquilar. In 1966 they had to stop the works due to the depletion of the gold veins, which meant the end of the splendor period. Since 1966 there have been several unsuccessful attempts to resume work until in 1991 the then Environmental Agency of the Junta de Andalucia bought part of the farm, which was being restored to house different Natural Park facilities.