MINERAL EXPLORERS | S2 | Ep5 | SPAIN
there is a mineral so perfectly formed people often question if it's real join us as we travel to Spain to explore the origin of this symmetrical mineral masterpiece [Music] I'm Thomas Nagin and I'm a mineral Explorer I'm the guy that supplies museums galleries and private collectors with world-class pieces of nature's art come along with us as we travel the globe in search of rare gems crystals and other fine minerals it's not always easy but it's always an adventure Barcelona is a popular tourist destination for its culture history and renowned architecture architecture that was often inspired by nature and we're here to find our own pieces of Spain's natural beauty and we have the perfect guy my name is Elizabeth I'm collecting minerals 44 years I kept the best one so or at least the things that I believe it they were the best and I try to build a collection from the countries where I can can access to the best pieces because I know well the people I know well the collections or they are easy to visit I put aside pieces from all times from all mines and with low prices because you need to do sell it later yes and those are pieces that usually the customers owned and see it because they are in boxes and behind you know and I believe it that you will like many of them because the quality and price it's quite good I really like this piece this is really attractive it's got the fluoride on the quartz yeah in the floor it's a really beautiful color and then its crystallized on the front and then all the way around the back yeah the Phantom have you seen the Phantom in the inside the corners deeper color inside the crystals of the sky-blue fluoride a phantom is the growth that happened originally and then it's covered over by an additional growth of the fluoride so you can see the original growth below the most recent growth rate because the fluoride are transparent this is from Spain here it sits up really nicely on the matrix it's got two different types of crystallization of calcite to me and really sparkles Jordi is a self-described disciple of the famed mineral collector Joaquin folt who helped popularize this hobby throughout Spain Jordi continues the tradition focusing on Spanish minerals but he also finds special pieces from nearby countries oh you have some nice Thanksgiving wonderful Morocco this is from Morocco I know you are not coming for Morocco but maybe someday you will do something about Morocco and this is a very nice piece this is a really nice pieces of red quartz it's colored by hematite and what I think limited inclusions make the quartz red and I didn't come to Spain from rock and minerals but I really love quartz so I'm gonna I'm gonna keep this piece yeah and by the prize and by the quality I believe that you will like it that's why I put aside for you I think this piece here is really great for decorators it has a nice hole in it there and it's got the fluorite on top of the quartz and it's got all kinds of really interesting little cavities in it that is one heavy rock with a new batch of Spanish fluorite and some other goodies checked off my shopping list I had a little more time to catch up on the history that surrounded us the celebrated architect Antoni gaudí once said originality consists in returning to the origin for him God was the original creator and if the artist looked to nature then he was collaborating with God I think gaudi would have appreciated the natural beauty of minerals and one can't talk about the history of minerals in Spain without talking about its most famous explorer you got on : después de descubrir america el primer lugar energy of ratio el descubrimiento de nuevo mundo for a Nestor Plaza segunda fella leyenda it raha con el cosa que nadie había visto nunca antes trajo mucho or o que vea cojiro in America trajo in Deus con el los Nueve in Yosuke sobre Vivian al viaje por que muchos Marie Aaron grant LV fe y los trajo para enseñar lays a los habit antes de Barcelona gente que no había visto nun contes de piel de cobre it raha con el papa ryos a vez en este Pumas lien as de colores que nadie había visto nunca antes y trajo con el alimentos que nunca nadie conoce a-- trajo patatas que no se Kanodia en Espana trajo Tomatis que no se canossian españa trajo aho ski no eran conocido ZN españa que era muy picante la gente los caminos sabia que era eso es para ti muy picante todo ESO era incredibily para la gente que vino aqui y les pareció maravilloso como si de repente el mundo say abrirse para ellos y descubrir sin algo que nunca antes a VM visto yes Oh Sato and este lugar this was a County a country full of richness mostly with minerals so like silver from Peru like go from Mexico all this stuff from South America they brought to Spain and they use it to improve the region s they cap and they kept almost nothing in South America for eternally the worst thing was the way that the Spaniards use the natives from South America mostly to work in the mines because they use it people as they are not human bodies so they put the people in the mines were cast you die and when they die they even left the people in the mines that's very sad it happened not only Spain did that many other Portuguese - Portuguese that the English people did that so this is unfortunately one of the bad things of the history and one of the bad things related with minerals but at the same time the supply of new energy in is the supply and rediscovers and it's a way to improve the wall Yunos has no life they are rocks but in some way we can relate some kind of life to the minerals giving the history which those minerals carry on if you take a mineral from the 19th century with an old label that maybe was in the collection of a king as it sometimes happens the story related with the mineral is so powerful that it imply for me bigger interest for this piece and frequently I will take a piece with a long term history than all or nicer but without history I am very very clean keeping the wall story of the mineral who by force who found first from the different collections that the mineral passed through and finally keeping all these story labels if possible on the behind because it gives the part of life that they don't have but I will say something that maybe will sound too strong but for me it's a part of my family 40 years you've been collecting oh yes I started to collect when I had fourteen I have 58 so 44 these four showcase special cases are all Spain all Spanish minerals this is a classic verbis fluorite with probably deeper color than usual with the variety you can see the blades of light on the corner that's typical here you have a fluoride a yellowish fluoride with a blueberry correct this is from Ascona Moscow now you can see a lot of yellow floral but not so common to see the blue blades of variety on the fluoride so that's a really clear dolomite that's a dolomite oh yeah I guess yeah really super clear where is this fluoride from that's what huge crystal and just this is the start of Flavius cos this was one of the best and I it takes 10 years going to the home of the miner who found this until I bought it and I was very happy for that 30 10 years 10 years going no always the same story oh yeah while Spanish fluoride is a favorite of many sometimes it's a little more hip to be square about five hours northwest of Barcelona in a sleepy little town with less than a dozen residents Nava who is the origin of these perfect cubes [Music] pues en la mina vivo trabajando desde caca Bella Carrera de hace aproximadamente una mentirosa knows a comenzado yes - da shaniyah technically - y-you lava me padre en la mina mi padre mio mio fratello cuando alone me off raphy okay you put podría seguir trabajando Nia yo empathy una Bala funeral of sessions and really laughs yo Korea in the pita in Vellore the coalition is repeated 370 por que nunca VI visto kuvasz perfecto special perfecto para que tal raghunatha across resistance Bapuji center mi padre Ron Pavarotti Fenton aquella época de s proton Romina solamente para el corrosion is mo opera biography own entonces él no crania mucho in the molecule affiliate thankfully Pedro's love of mineral specimens allowed these world-renowned pieces to be cultivated putting this medieval town on the mineral map the reputation of these crystals continues to capture the imagination of collectors around the globe [Music] my name is Daniel Uli vari I have been part of parata's than have a home for 12 years I love minerals and I'm very passionate about our pirate crystals here in Navajo ever since I saw the first crystal I was mind blown you know I see them every day of my life and there's always a new crystal that you know keeps me keeps me wondering like how are these crystals so perfect so in Peru we saw whatever generally considered the world's best pyrites on a matrix because they're on this beautiful white quartz but in Spain we're gonna see what are generally considered the world's best pyrites the sharpest most perfect crystals in nature they go out into the world and these things just inspire people you see them in Rock shops you see them in museums I had one when I was a kid so pyrite is just iron sulphide in many places in the world it's the industrial war of iron that we use in industry or of sulfur and when the iron and sulfide combine and ideal conditions you get a perfect cube which is what we see here it's perfect conditions for growing crystals if we go at the beginning of the Celtic very people that inhabited this area they used to use the cubes for for magic they believed you know that they offer some type of power or that they could do something sort of like witchcraft with them and interestingly even before Roman times the ancient Celts and Iberian tribes used it as a firestarter they would use the pyrite crystals to make streaks and get sparks and then the medieval people they will eat up a little piece of pirate and they will believe that it will kill them from stomach pains so there's been a lot of different uses for it this is the the perfection of nature on a microscopic scale writ large so that we can see it in a beautiful crystal minerals are snapshots of our planet throughout millions of years every mineral has a history every mineral has a special place where they come from there's only one way to prove that these pieces form naturally and that's to go to the source is too soon aloo tamatar bajo que mas mas simple fellow ok vamos Hondo in a sterile area los cuatro meses Emilio yes Rama Hari kono see a Muslim coruña for not donde I bastante convent Ravi on the the bleeders inabilities de Cali de freitas grandes que muchas bonitas si como puedes ver la contracciones enorme aha I'm Moochi see my concentration illa llah prefers pistolas son bueno son kuvasz perfectors hay algunos cores estos que ellos corren Calibri dan aristos young gurus he Wallace aha Allah Allah naturally that was not simple as me comme une boy it's amazing the perfect cube anybody that sees these specimens for the first time they always think it's cotter polish I haven't met a single person doesn't matter what background you come from even if you're a geologist or a mining engineer that sees a perfect gift for the first time and believe it's natural yeah until you see this something like there's something really interesting here so these are these cast features the little squares where the pyrite keeps come up there's still this really thin residue right around a lot of the pyrites because you know what that is that's the heat of formation rind from when these crystals nucleated from bacterial or or volcanic sulfur origins they formed within the soft rock and pushed their way out and that releases heat just like when diamonds form they have this rind around them and that actually proves they're natural it's crazy it's like a trace fossil of the formation of the mineral fantastic and as you can see you know actually the high concentration of cubes creates a problem for us to get specimens in really perfect condition they're so dense that you know they'll have contact points with other crystals and you know that takes value from the crystals we we wanted to have us as perfect with no damage as we can so you're actually looking for something with a medium concentration the best yes that's surprised yes you can see I mean here you know there are so many that if we remove all of these actually it's the second quality material [Music] it's yours it's yours have you take it rub there you go that's that big one yeah I'm happy as you can see I mean that's way above the average of the size of the crystals we just raise it a little bit and you as you can see when we start removing the limestone they cubes really start to shine it's amazing it's like a mirror so actually there's a lesson here about how they formed right above us you can see the rich iron staining so this is a moral this is a chalky moral it's called after German and England locations and it's a mix of mud stone and limestone that doesn't quite get hard enough to be limestone and so what happened is you would have had the sulfur in the moral and then tens of millions of years later you have deposits over it that produced the iron and you can actually see the iron that's the red leaking down for CIPA tating in with the sulfur and at some point these all spontaneously start to crystallize within the the soft corroded moral it's totally unique in all the world isn't it [Music] with so much pyrite nearly a million tons there's definitely an industrial economic value for this iron sulphide but Pedro would rather share his country's art with the world so we're lucky your passion takes an economic deposit and gives us the crystals this is another part of the first level we're in the zone be down below here we have larger cubes which have formed in groups that are naturally together now this is a rarer formation here because normally you just get the single cubes but when you get them forming and interlocking together this is what collectors really like taking the larger more expensive pieces out is an art unto itself and with such a rich mind it's easy to get distracted by the finds right beneath your feet there's pyrites everywhere it's it's unbelievable it's it's hard to keep walking and that stuff yeah everywhere you look there's pyrites well I didn't even realize it but once you start focusing your eyes cubic shapes on the ground my pockets are full aside from owning a supernatural mind Pedro is a magician in the kitchen Pedro also runs a small bed and breakfast where he shares the rich culinary history of Spain along with the perfection of pyrite Navajo is in La Rioja the wine region of Spain and after a few glasses we were ready to see where the most coveted pieces are found so these these have such beautiful crystals and the matrix is harder so when you remove these with the chainsaw how long till they come to market when could I buy one well we can take up to a month to prepare these type of specimens they're very very special so as you take these out of here you use like a rock hammer yes in this area we mostly do chisel and hammer way larger than that what we've seen in there in the other areas while robbing Daniel continued the hunt for pyrites pedro and i decided to check out some of the other prehistoric geological history of the area pedro tells me that there were three basic types of dinosaurs that were very common here in this area that were vegetarian and one is the Iguanodon and it ate mainly plants in the Titanosaurus ate mainly leaves in the vari onyx was a vegetarian also accepted did eat fish and it came to this area to eat the fish that were in the lagoon yavi algunos carnivorous tomato cake ameerin aadhi todo ESO de perros cm played on the a via a river or a via camera como puedes ver muchos Hoyos diferentes y yo pienso que ser una familia y Wynonna's una una familia y bueno es que esta digamos muy bien Londo [Music] training with a Kaesong dinosaurios tell oppose people's todo esto era no la OC no UN Barrios la voz connect ADO's y por supuesto esta strata no estaba see ok estaba yeah no homo in vientos que levantar on e in clean air on all terrain oh you see the embargo akia via otra moon epistle aki say now track e la otra aquí la otra Aggie is v 2 s plus correspondent al mismo Dino's audio a la forma en bar the footprint Lalo's impression is the low plateau system we Clarita Aquino para Mis o las mejores de toda la zona C ninguna hidden moon Allah primero por su de mano is pushed for shoot proof from the earth uh-huh say son las máscaras it so being Clara toes wiggler si eso sake se puede ver mejor Toria mejor to area is a Buddhist again perfectamente el rastro hace el rastro con el período con el cual el Gavilan el paso these impressions of dinosaur prints occurred about 120 to 130 million years ago pyrites same time as the dinosaurs after following in the footprints of dinosaurs I was ready to bring home my own pieces of geological history and Pedro had me covered the best pieces from the mine the ones that take the time and skill to dig all end up at his warehouse where he sells them to collectors dealers and museums you just don't see this many really good clean perfect pieces in one room here's a piece that I think is really sweet it's got several cubes that are interlocked and these are interlocked naturally they haven't been glued together or anything and really aesthetic in the matrix [Music] and then I got a a couple of more decorative pieces that interior decorators love look at all the cubes on there and if you move it a little bit it just like really glitters with my budget blown on this pyrite party pedro invited me to see his private collection I look at this piece this is really nice several cubes that are all connected together sitting in the matrix lo que vienen de todo es la protección de la serda stes no standing back alleys no tienen ninguna brought the stamp perfect [Music] la vamos a ver una Kazan authentic us for you wow look at all those interconnected cubes between totally perfect you call these twins right yeah Wow look at this these are 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 cubes that are intricately connected naturally this is just the way they grew I love this space that is cuteness come on that is really we're not a Rosa oh wow suspicion [Music] the fimo Skelos las penitas Cristal - El Sistema Kumiko pero no sé si es cierto SS como una galleta it's like a cracker it's a cute it's cubic form but it formed really thin it's pretty rare occurrence muy especial porque and well ya know son those crystal is not so nice with these tiles from those crystals we've only talked the reason I love what I do is because I get to connect with other passionate collectors will also value the beauty of Earth's creations and sharing them with the world Spain has been a chapter with many memories to take home if you want to see more episodes or check out our mineral collection click the link in the description and of course like and subscribe to our Channel thanks for watching and we'll see you next time on mineral explorers [Music]
2021-01-04 08:25
