The diversity of Alt Berguedà enables you to pass, in a few minutes, from seeing thousands of dinosaur footprints from more than 65 million years ago to seeing, from the inside, the everyday life of a coal mine. Two apparently unconnected worlds that share space and complement each other with great ease. To discover the relationship between geology, dinosaurs and coal, it will be sufficient to visit Fígols, Cercs, Saldes or Vallcebre and their surrounding areas. Here, different geological processes created the layers of coal that have recorded the dinosaur footprints from millions of years ago, revealed by the recent mining operations. This is the close relationship of  Berguedà with mining, geology and palaeontology, i.e., between the earth, coal and dinosaurs.

In these areas, an opencast mining operation in 1985 revealed the palaeontological site of Fumanya, the largest in Europe, with footprints of sauropods from the upper Cretaceous era, and one of the most important in the world. The Fumanya Interpretation Centre for Dinosaurs is located at an altitude of over 1,400 metres, where you can observe the footprints and learn about life millions of years ago.

This centre is in the old open cast coal mining installations of Fumanya, which closed definitively in 1991. Mining presided the life of most of the villages in Alt Berguedà during the 20th century. The economic depression resulting from the end of mining activities affected the whole region and has been overcome with the reconversion of these and other spaces. The old mines have become museums, so as not to lose the memory of this way of life. Thus, visitors can experience the life of miners and learn about the colonies, which were a unique institution that conditioned an essential era of Alt Berguedà. Everybody still remembers one episode or another of the mine. Such as the revolt of 1932, when during the Republic, libertarian communism was proclaimed in  Fígols, or the explosion of firedamp in the Consolació mine, where thirty miners died, all locals.

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