The Valenciana Mine, known as Mina de La Valenciana in Spanish, is located in Guanajuato, Mexico. Valenciana is about 6 km from the Historic Center, Guanajuato, Guanajuato. La Valenciana Mine, Historic Guanajuato City, and surrounding mines are part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It began to exploit silver in the 16th century. Its extraction of silver was so abundant that its production was equivalent to two-thirds of the total that was obtained from this metal in all of New Spain. Currently, it belongs to the Santa Fe Cooperative Society of Metallurgical Mines of Guanajuato and continues to be exploited at a depth of 760 meters.
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Valenciana Mine in the context of Guanajuato (city)
Guanajuato (Spanish pronunciation: [gwanaˈxwato], Otomi: Ndänuë) is a municipality in central Mexico and the capital of the State of Guanajuato. It is part of the macroregion of the Bajío. It is located in a narrow valley, which makes its streets narrow and winding. Most are alleys that cars cannot pass through, and some are long sets of stairs up the mountainsides. Many of the city's thoroughfares are partially or fully underground. The historic center has numerous small plazas and colonial-era mansions, churches, and civil constructions built using pink or green sandstone. The city historic center and the adjacent mines were proclaimed a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988.
The growth of Guanajuato resulted from the abundantly available minerals in the mountains surrounding it. Its mines were among the most important during the European colonization of America (along with Zacatecas also in Mexico, Potosí in Bolivia and Ouro Preto in Brazil). One of the mines, La Valenciana, accounted for two-thirds of the world's silver production at the height of its production.
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