An active mining museum housed within a real lignite mine at Escucha, open to visitors since 2002 and unique in Spain.
The Museo Minero de Escucha occupies the interior of the former lignite mine known as «Se Verá», situated at Escucha in the comarca of Cuencas Mineras, Teruel. The earliest documented record of the mine dates to around 1850. From its opening in the late nineteenth century until the 1940s, the mine was operated by a company directed by the brothers Argüelles; ownership subsequently passed to the Empresa Nacional Calvo Sotelo (ENCASO), which continued extraction until closure in 1968.
Between 1968 and 1991 the galleries were used by Minas y Ferrocarriles de Utrillas (MFU) for the ventilation of the adjacent Pozo Pilar mine. The workforce reached a peak of 250 at its height. Access for visitors is by original personnel wagons descending a gallery inclined at 33 to 36 degrees over 200 metres lineally, reaching a depth of approximately 80 to 100 metres below surface level.
The museum opened on 18 July 2002 at the initiative of the Ayuntamiento de Escucha and draws around 25,000 visitors annually. When it opened it was the first visitable mine in Spain and the third in Europe.
The mine known as «Se Verá» lies at the heart of the Cuencas Mineras district of Teruel, a comarca with a documented mining identity stretching back at least to 1683, when the earliest recorded fatality from mining in the area is noted — a man who died while extracting jet (azabache) in the Barranco Malo. Lignite began to be worked industrially in the district in the nineteenth century. The first documentary record of «Se Verá» dates to around 1850. From that time until the early 1940s, the concession was held by a company directed by the brothers Argüelles, who worked the lignite over several decades and built up a workforce that would eventually peak at 250 employees.
In approximately the 1940s — one source describes the mine as opening in the 1940s, another placing it in operation for approximately one hundred years before its 1968 closure — Empresa Nacional Calvo Sotelo (ENCASO), a state industrial company, took over the titularidad of the concession and continued extraction of lignite. Under ENCASO the mine was modernised; photographs and visitor accounts describe the galleries as retaining their original condition from the last day of operation. The mine closed in 1968. For the period from 1968 to 1991, the galleries of «Se Verá» were not simply abandoned: Minas y Ferrocarriles de Utrillas (MFU), which operated the large adjacent Pozo Pilar mine, used the «Se Verá» workings for ventilation purposes.
By 1991 all use of the underground workings had ceased. In the years that followed, the Ayuntamiento de Escucha developed a programme of conservation of the municipality's industrial mining heritage, from which three visitor centres were eventually created: the Museo Minero de Escucha, the Centro Interpretativo Minero Pozo Pilar, and a planned Casa Museo de la Familia Minera. The museum within «Se Verá» was opened on 18 July 2002, becoming the first visitable mine in Spain and the third in Europe at the time of its opening.
The visitor experience involves equipping participants with personal protective equipment — helmet-lamp, self-rescuer, and battery pack — and descending in two original personnel wagons down the access gallery, which follows an incline of 33 to 36 degrees over 200 metres lineally, reaching a depth of approximately 80 to 100 metres. At the foot of the incline, two horizontal galleries carry the visitor through recreations of mining labours across different periods, displays of tooling and entibation methods, and sections using both metal arched supports and traditional timber posting. The highlight of the route is the only publicly visitable natural coal face in Spain, where the visitor can observe the lignite seam in its original in-situ state. The surface area around the museum includes an outdoor display of large-scale mining machinery and a Bosque Fósil containing nineteen fossilised tree trunks of conifers approximately 110 million years old. The visit is conducted by guided tour of approximately 75 minutes. Around 25,000 visitors are received annually.