The history of Portmán

Portmán was a natural harbour at the service of the mining industry which eventually ruined it

What is now the village of Portmán in the administrative district of La Unión lies in a natural sheltered harbor at the foot of one of the greatest sources of mineral deposits in southern Spain: the Sierra Minera. Rich in a number of different minerals and ores, this has dictated the history of the village as subsequent civilisations have inhabited the area in order to exploit these natural resources.

Before humankind began to appreciate the benefits of smelting metal the area was home to prehistoric inhabitants, who left behind evidence of their presence in the form of decorated pottery, tools, bracelets, polished axes and decorations made from shells, some of which are now on display in the Cartagena archaeology museum, and others in the Portmán archaeological musuem. The main sites showing signs of human habitation in the bay of Portmán were the Monte San Joaquín which yielded Neolithic materials and Cabezo Agudo where Iberian ceramics were found.
There was a major Iberian presence in this area of Murcia and in the latter years of Iberian settlement (Iberians occupation covers a period from approximately 750BC to the 1st century BC when they were subsumed into the Roman population and lost their own identity as a definable culture) and a great deal of evidence has been found showing the interaction between the Iberians and the traders who plied the Mediterranean coastline, including the Greeks and Phoenicians.

The Cabezo Agudo Iberian settlement is believed to have lasted roughly until the Romans invaded in 209BC and totally changed the face of the area.

There may have been some extraction of minerals during the Iberian period, which is highly likely as the Iberians used metal weapons and tools ( a good place to explore the Iberian culture is inland in Mula, North-west Murcia where there is a museum dedicated exclusively to the Iberian culture, the Cigarralejo) but the Romans began a process of mass exploitation of the area and its natural resources, an estimated 40,000 slaves working in the mines of the Sierra Minera behind Portmán.

The sheltered bay was the natural place from which to ship out ingots of lead, silver and other minerals and it was the Romans who named the area Portus Magnus (large port), a name which was later corrupted and shortened to Portmán. The bay was converted into one of the busiest ports in the western Mediterranean, transporting not only iron and lead from the mountains of Sierra Minera but also salted fish and garum sauce which were made along this coastline using the abundant fish stocks in the Mediterranean and taking advantage of the sunniest climate on the Iberian peninsula.( Lead ingots can be seen in both the Cartagena archaeological musuem and the La Unión mining museum) Esparto grass was another major export, although it is likely that minerals were the major export from Portmán. There were certainly other trade goods passing through the port as Portmán linked into the Via Augusta which ran all the way along the Mediterranean coastline to the French border, then joined with other major trading routes straight to Rome, and the proximity of Cartagena would have ensured a constant flow of valuable materials and opportunities.

The scale of mining activity and the volumes of materials generated mean that there are many Roman sites around this area,( see Cabezo del Pino) as a response to the volume of business and trade which would have been possible, amongst them the substantial villa found in the area now known as Huerto del Paturro near to Portmán. This is alongside the modern road and although there is little more than low walls remaining today, shows signs of substantial wealth, one of the most important finds the “triclinium” ( dining room area) which covered a floor area of approximately 60 square metres, the largest yet found in the Region of Murcia. Smaller mosaics and other artifacts found at the site are on display in the Portmán archaeological museum, which occupies the building previously used as the Hospital de la Caridad.

After the Roman Empire crumbled in the fifth century AD the Roman mines were abandoned and Portmán returned to fishing as its main economic activity. Southern Spain was invaded by the Moors from Africa in 711 AD and they remained in occupation for just over 500 years, although their impact on the Sierra Minera was minimal as they had very little interest in mining for lead, their activity limited to the extraction of Alumbre, used for fixing the dye in cloth. At this time Portmán was known first as Abû Üthâm and later as Boterman al Kibir or Burtuman Al-Kabir.

The Reconquista brought the area under Christian control in 1243, when the forces of Castile y León took the Kingdom of Murcia, and at this point Portmán is mentioned in documents as “Bortman-a-Cabir”, belonging to the jurisdiction of Cartagena. By the following century the name had mutated to “Porte Mayn”, indicating that there was still a settlement of some sort at this point in time.

However, Murcia was a dangerous place, as it bordered with the last Moorish kingdom remaining on the Iberian peninsula: the Kingdom of Granada and as such was subjected to constant border skirmishes. By 1492 the Moors had been defeated altogether and were thrown out of not only the Kingdom of Granada, but any who refused to convert to Christianity were also kicked out of Spain. Thousands of displaced farmers who had been born in Spain now found themselves homeless and piracy became a real problem throughout the latter part of the Middle Ages.

The coast of Murcia was constantly at threat from Berber pirate raiders crossing the Mediterranean from northern Africa, stealing livestock, crops and even humans who  were either sold as slaves or ransomed, and in 1596 a watchtower was built in the same spot now occupied by the lighthouse. In the following century, particularly during the reign of Felipe III (1598-1621), the port was continually used by military and other vessels, although the population remained low because of the constant danger.

For the next 200 years very little activity was documented in the area and it was only in the mid-19th century when major change took place, once again linked to the mineral wealth of the Sierra Minera.

This coincided with the onset of the industrial age throughout Europe and the loss of Spain’s American colonies, and La Unión and Cartagena were among the towns and cities benefitting from the increased demand for minerals.

Numerous immigrants arrived on the back of the upsurge in the mining industry and the population in the area increased as mining shafts were once again sunk into the hillsides and large-scale mining resumed.

In 1860 Portmán joined the municipality of La Unión, segregating itself from Cartagena along with El Garbanzal, Herrerías, Llano del Beal and Roche.

At the time of the First World War mining in Portmán was controlled by two companies, the Mancomunidad Miguel Zapata e Hijos and the Sociedad Minera y Metalúrgica de Peñarroya. So powerful were these two concerns that they operated a virtual monopoly on prices, but after the war, when demand from the munitions industry dropped off suddenly, the sector entered a crisis. As a result, Portmán quickly lost a large number of inhabitants, and the slump lasted until well after the Civil War ended in 1939.

In 1945 open-cast mining came to Portmán, with positive short-term results as the Lavadero Roberto was opened in 1957 and immigrants were once again attracted by opportunities for employment. However, the new mining operations resulted in millions of tons of sterile by-products being dumped in the bay, which by the time the last mine closed down in 1992 had been almost completely filled in.

Unfortunately, the legacy of this is that Portmán is now known nationwide as the scene of an ecological disaster for which no definitive solution has yet been found, despite repeated attempts to initiate a regeneration program and restore the bay to its natural state.

A side effect of this is that Portmán has failed to take advantage of the property construction boom enjoyed by other areas of the Mediterranean Spanish coastline, so remains a fairly small village with around 1,000 inhabitants, the population swelling during the summer months when Spanish families return to the area for their annual holidays.

Much of the land which could be developed is owned by the Portmán Golf Company, an offshoot of the original mining company which “bought” the ( its own) assets of Peñarroya, the company responsible for dumping millions of tons of sterile waste into the bay, ( thus absolving them of responsibility for the damage they had created) who have plans to build several thousand homes, golf course, marina etc once the bay has been regenerated, so the paradoxical situation is that those who caused the damage yet refuse to pay to clean it up will benefit most once somebody else forks out the money to clean up the mess they created.

However, for the moment, many attempts to regenerate the bay have failed and although the beach is still popular with locals, the shoreline is substantially further out than it was before, and the village undertakes a relatively small amount of tourist activity, while acting very much as a dormitory town for nearby Cartagena and the La Manga Club development just a short distance away.