German mines in Portugal

**António Fragoeiro** · 03-22-2012, 06:55 PM

Hi, here are some photos of the german mine located in Rio do Frade, from where they were excavating Volframio for the war effort.
In the outskirts almost 3000 people lived there at the time, now only about 100 do.
Mostly the old remain there.
However they were not alone, the british also were excavating a mine just 5km away.

**António Fragoeiro** · 03-22-2012, 06:58 PM

The site today.

**António Fragoeiro** · 03-22-2012, 07:00 PM

An exploration of the site.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=VAdf5pbn5dE

**big ned** · 03-22-2012, 07:11 PM

Looks like a lovely spot Nuno! Notice the reddish brown colouring of the rock in the old tunnel, that's a classic sign for the quartz deposits that contain Wolframite(Tungsten) ore.

Regards, Ned.

**sitges1990** · 03-22-2012, 10:26 PM

Great post Nuno! I could spend days digging through those ruins. You've got a beautifully diverse landscape and endless days of sunshine Nuno. What a lucky man.

Jay

**JMM** · 03-23-2012, 11:06 AM

by NunoGTI

The site today.

Nice pics. Thanks for posting a bit of WWII history
Were you able to get any remaining pieces of volframio from locals?

**Salzburg** · 03-23-2012, 11:22 AM

Fascinating site and a good report. The sort of site that I just love to poke around.

**SteveR** · 03-23-2012, 06:18 PM

I had older German friends that had cork forests in portugal. They owned the Benderwerks cork factory in Munich. They made wine and liquor bottle corks.