EL PEÑONCILLO MINE (MARBELLA-OJÉN)

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El Peñoncillo (Marbella - Ojén)

Irregular lenses and banded green amphibolites forming magnetic skarn, mineralized in magnetite, pyrite and pyrrhotite, embedded in amphibolitic gneiss, and foliated amphibolites. Those ore bedrocks are folded where contact to dolomitic marbles. Gangue is abundant as pyroxene and bearing calcium-magnesium amphibole. Blanca Unit. Alpujárride complex.

Mining works are known since early XIX century (1826) due to  famous business man Manuel Agustin Heredia, who established and settled three iron smelting high blast furnaces; two in Marbella (La Concepción y el Angel foundries, in 1826), and one La Constancia in Malaga city (1833). After the death of Heredia, the british mining company The Marbella Iron Ore Company limited worked the mine since 1872 to 1911, where a railway layout is still visible on the landscape transporting the ore to the port of the city.  

Origin: Calcium-magnesium skarn association which contain pyroxene diopside-hedembergite,
peninite, scapolite, titanite and green amphibole. Mineralized masses are folded and dipping in a wedge-shape inside amphibolites host rock.

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