The industry

Spain has been inhabitated since the earliest times. Their people have always made use of the resources of the various natural stones.

In the beginning, when their technical knowledge was still rudimentary, the ancient Spaniards only used cut rocks for their funneral or religious monuments, or as foundations for their houses and fortifications.

Slowly they learned the art of quarrying, of cutting and working the stones, and gradually used it frequently in their buildings, sculptures and personal ornaments.

The Greeks and Phoenicians colonised the coast and gave an important push to this work, teaching how to exploit, cut, work and even sculpt the worked elements, columns and adornments with wich they built and beautified their homes and temples. The ruins of Ampurias and Rosas are present surviving witnesses, of those ancient artisans.

With the conquest of the peninsula by the Romans, the art of quarrying gained importance, both in production volume and in technological development, mastered by the colonizers.

Their aptitudes as civil and military engineers and their refinements as citizens, gave rise to buildings that still amaze us, both for their beauty and their technical perfection. The roadways that cross the peninsula, the asttounding bridges and aqueducts in wich utility and esthetics are closely combined, fort, town walls, etc., and the beauty and refinement of villas. theatres, amphitheaters, are all buildings in wich marble is a basic material. The few vestiges the ruins of the Roman theatre in Merida make the visitor marvel to think what the place must have been like.

Since the conquest of Iberia by the Arabs, in the VIII th century, their architects also exquisit craftsment in marble, used it in public and private buildings. When they were left without sculptors and painters because of the commands of the Koran they directed their attention and efforts to in stone work, and achieved the marvels of the Alhambra, the Mosque of Cordoba, Medina Zahara, and many more.

Middle Age saw an important technical and cultural regression in Europe, and this also affected the marble industry. However, Spanish quarrymen had not forgotten their art and were able to achieve great perfection in Romanic and Gothic cathedrals that were scattered all over the land.

The Modern Age, with buildings such as the Monastery of El Escorial, the Royal Palace, the royal lodges with Bourbonic influence, used marble as the most noble and precious of ornamental rocks. It was during this era that the art and science of stone was exported to the New World, and marvellous colonial constructions were produced in wich marble played a basic role.

Since then, to nowadays, humanity has evolved technically and the marble industry has also evolved. Electricity, compressed air, explosives, huge cutting machines, loading and transport have all made the work easier and profitable, obtaining greater use and better quality.

In the workshops, diamond tip cutters, huge saws, polishers, sophisticated and highly automated machines, now work without any human effort, demanding from many only the supervision and control, that is, his intelligence and capacity for judgement.

All this has lead to a perfection in productions, and in the Spanish case it allowed its industry to succesfully approach international markets with top quality products, having acquired a solid reputation and well earned prestige.

Spanish companies have undertaken the modernization of the sector succesfully. They have answered the challenge and have accepted the fact that, together with the rest of the Spanish economy, they must face adhesion to Europe and the disappearance of custom barriers. Marble exports are very important reaching many countries, including some as distant and difficult to penetrate as the U.S.A and Japan.

The varieties being extracted in Spain, with different names and greater or lesser production, total about one hundred and problably there are even more.

Some of them, however, are very small explotations and either supply local markets or have only a ephemerous presence in the market. On the other hand, there are other that are well introduced, with rockbodies with large reserves, and wich have been well studied and whose exploiting industry is modern and technologically advanced.

The most developed centers, that still coexists with rudimentary production units and some family concepts, are found in the Basque Country, Levante and Andalucia: Marquina, Novelda and Macael are universally known Spanish locations, closely linked to the marble on wich they have based their economic development.