“Opening the caves of Carrucho de Cáceres to tourism is not ruled out, it is an option”

The calcareous subsoil of Cáceres, El Calerizo, is a rich geological area that provides innumerable clues to better understand the city’s past. The caves of Maltravieso, which houses the oldest cave paintings in the world, Santa Ana and El Conejar, in addition to the discovery in 2019 during the works of the Southeast Round of the Carrucho caves are the most outstanding landmarks.

The Friends of the Ribera del Marco Association and the Calerizo Masa de Agua Platform organized a colloquium talk yesterday at the Public Library on the archaeological treasures of this space. There they announced a ‘crowdfunding’ campaign to continue planting trees in the surroundings of the Ronda Sureste.

In the talk, the archaeologist from the Junta Hipólito Collado contributed his vision as one of the greatest connoisseurs of the area, detailing in detail the most recent discovery, the Carrucho caves, which have two cavities, one three and a half meters long and one main space of more than ten. In the second there are more galleries and in it some bone remains and a stone remains have been found.

The fit of these caves in the heritage of the city is one of the great unknowns until now. Currently they remain closed and conserved, although, as Hipólito Collado points out, they are accessible. The road was made but an access was left to be able to go down to these cavities. “What can be done with them is an issue that the Junta de Extremadura and the City Council of Cáceres will have to address.” Could they be visited and thus expand the tourist circuit of the city? Hipólito Collado indicates that “it is not ruled out” and specifies that the owner is the City Council of Cáceres. «The important thing was to save it, something that has already been achieved, now it’s time to consider what can be done, there may be many options, now we are in a new phase and we have to address whether any research project can be carried out, to enhance the value of those cavities, although everything goes with its rhythm and with its steps».

Until now, the work that has been carried out in this cavity has been geological and geotechnical studies to determine how the road could affect the cave itself. «Work has been done from the point of view not only of Heritage but also of management to conserve a geological heritage that has great value, in other circumstances it might not have been conserved, but on this occasion everyone worked to prioritize this aspect, it was important, a lot of work had to be done to be able to preserve them, that was the first challenge».

Regarding the investigation of the Maltravieso cave to measure the effects of the visits on the conservation of the cave paintings that were stopped by the pandemic, Collado indicated that they will not be resumed “until we return to true normality and we do not have to return back, until then we cannot know when the visits will resume.

What seems complicated is that this cave is reopened for research. In 2008 it was closed to prevent the cave paintings from deteriorating, which the latest studies date back to 66,700 years. Collado points out that databases such as Handpass, in which these remains are digitized, allow virtual access digitally and without the need to enter the cave.