FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Jordi Fabre]

We introduce here by courtesy of the Instituto Geológico y Minero de España (IGME) through Ramón Jiménez, the online version of the Catalog of the IGME

This catalog is the publication of the Mineral Collection of the IGME of the Autonomous Communities and Cities of Spain and begins with the Community of Madrid. This is a small treasure made available to all thanks to the IGME

There is also a Spanish version that can be viewed here: Catálogo on line de los minerales de Ias colecciones del IGME - Comunidad de Madrid

The collection of minerals from Madrid
The purpose of this paper is to present the Madrid Region Mineral Catalogue as one of the most prominent landmarks of the project called "Upgrade and valorization of the collection of minerals from Spanish Administrative Regions and owned by the Geominero Museum: Castilla - La Mancha and Madrid regions", which was funded by IGME for three years and implemented until the end of 2011. This project was the beginning of the updating of the collection of Spanish minerals of the Museum.

To see it click on this link or in the image:

[Jordi Fabre]

The IGME offered this book with the purpose to have the maximum diffusion and, success! just appeared, very prominent, in the well known Mineralogical Record's newsletter on line: "MR Newsletter January 2019"

Congratulations IGME

[alfredo]

We went last week to Madrid and visited the Geominero Museum, right next door to the IGME (Instituto Geologico y Minero de España). Curator Ramon Jimenez very kindly met us and gave us an introduction to the history of the collection and their spectacular 100 year old building with its high glass roof, five floors above the ground, which floods the museum with natural daylight.

Unfortunately, covid regulations are keeping the upper floors closed (because the stairways are too narrow to comply with social distancing rules), so we could only see the main floor, which luckily exhibits the systematic mineral collection, the most important one for me, arranged by chemical classes, and the systematic fossil collection, the most important for my 6 year old daughter (oh, sorry, I've just been rebuked and corrected, it's “6 plus, almost 7”), arranged according to the geological time scale.

On the right as one enters are the Native Elements cases, and those are followed counterclockwise around the wall of the hall by the other chemical classes in Dana order. I'll mention just a few of the pieces that jumped out and caught my attention, although given my fondness for the rare and unusual, I've probably overlooked a lot of the beautiful but more common species that would be preferred by many of our dear Forum members.

Native Elements: Native Golds from various localities in Spain, including a roughly 2 oz. nugget from Salamanca. There was even a native gold from Uruguay, a country I'd never thought of as a gold producer before. Native Lead from Hiendelaencina (Who knew Spain had impressive native lead?).

Sulphides: A large and absolutely perfect “iron cross” Pyrite twin from the Matacana mine in Colombia.

Halides: Salammoniac from Pichincha volcano, Ecuador. Antique glass bottles of various salts from Stassfurt, Germany.

Oxides: Very nice volcanic Hematite crystals from Madeira island, Portugal. The Cassiterite crystals from various Spanish localities are cool too.

Sulphates: A beautiful violet Coquimbite and very big (for the species) Voltaite from the Pozo Alfredo (no, I swear I had nothing to do with that), in Spain. A Picromerite from some potash mine near Magdeburg, Germany.

Borates: A really big Londonite from Madagascar.

Silicates: The rare tin silicate Stokesite from Madrid! A really big green Beryl (emerald) crystal from Spain, although not gem quality.

Quartzes, separated off by themselves, perhaps because no one can every agree whether quartz is an oxide or a silicate: The plate of dark blue(!) quartz crystals from Antequera, Spain, is to die for. A nice group of smoky quartz crystals from Hirukawa, Japan. And in the center of the floor, a big boulder of rose quartz from Extremadura, Spain, with patches of unusually deep pink and transparent material that could be used to make some great gems.

I really appreciated the traditional museum labeling, a card for each specimen with the mineral name and locality. The “modern” trend to do away with labels and replace them with just a number, which requires pressing electric buttons or fiddling with some cell phone app to get the information, I find rather annoying.

My little daughter liked the fossils, and I couldn't ignore them either. My eyes were immediately drawn to the several Ordovician age Cruziana fossils from the Almaden area, Ciudad Real (more well known to mineral collectors for the famous mercury mines which have provided a whole third of entire world Hg production over the last 2,000 years), because I had often seen them before in Ordovician rocks in Bolivia. Cruzianas must have caused serious embarrassment to those paleontologists who studied what kind of animals they were... before they were discovered to be merely bilateral scratch marks made by trilobites grubbing in the mud for food.

The museum is open M-F, 9am to 2pm, at Calle Rios Rosas 23. Take the subway, line 1, to Rios Rosas station, and you are right there. Entry to the museum is free of charge.

[Bob Morgan]

Years ago my wife talked me into going to Spain rather than Tucson. This place made it all worthwhile. As a beginning pyrite enthusiast there was the most interesting pyrite I've ever seen, just to the right of the entrance - more faces and forms. It was from a talc mine in Pueblo Lillo. Leon.
The 5 floors of locality cases seemed to cover every mineral from each place. I must have seen over 15 pyrite 'iron cross' twin localities.
It is too much for just one visit. Then there's the 'other' museum right next door with the best of the best Spanish mineral specimens!
Alfredo, my hat's off to you finding a way to make it a wonderful experience for the both of you.

[Firmo Espinar]

Let me add some photographs about the Geominero Museum.