Geologia i roques industrials de la província de Barcelona en un manuscrit de 1868

Abstract

Geology and industrial rocks of the Barcelona province in a 1868 manuscript. An unpublished memoir on the rock quarries of Barcelona province is presented. It was compiled by the industrial engineer Teodoro Merly de Iturralde (ca.1835-ca.1925) in 1868, just when the development of the urban plan of Barcelona city, known as Pla Cerdà, was at its beginning. Forty-two active quarries of building stone, all of them located less than 80 km far from the city, are described in it. Rocks are chiefly limestones, sandstones and freestones of diverse geological ages. Lithological characteristics, specific weight, breaking load and price in Barcelona of all them were recorded. Moreover, some data on argillaceous, metallic and other building materials, as well as of some of their mines are given.
In July 1867, Merly presented an early manuscript accompanied by a geological map of the Barcelona province to the annual contest organised by the Sociedad Económica Barcelonesa de Amigos del País (SEBAP). By October 10 of the same year, he presented a corrected version of the memoir, the map and a collection of stone samples. Short after, all those materials were exhibited at the Exposición Aragonesa celebrated in Zaragoza. At last, Merly was awarded by the SEBAP on February 3 1879.
On the other hand, on January, 19 1869, the French civil engineer Hyacinthe de Moulin, former assistant at Barcelona’s Mining Office obtained, from Barcelona’s Provincial Council, a grant to produce the provincial Geological Map at a 1:100.000 scale. He had previously presented a geographical map, a geological sketch and a collection of stone samples. After temporal, thematic and material coincidences, keeping in mind the complementary specialities of Merly (topography and rock mechanics) and Moulin (geology), and in view of the results obtained, a win-win agreement between them both is suggested.