Cova de les Encantades

The entrance is 4 x 1.5 metres, opening at ground level; it gives way to a wide, high gallery, whose height decreases once we have climbed up a step. At 30 metres from the entrance, a narrower gallery leaves to the right and reaches the Sala Bernades, heavily decorated with formations. Continuing along the main gallery we reach a very low-roofed chamber, where we find a hole that gives way to a short but steeply sloping ramp that places us in a gallery about 2.5 metres in diameter (Galeria dels Enllaços); a fissure open in the floor will allow us to access other sectors, such as the Pou de Sand and the Nou and Vell rivers; also, a 7-metre shaft connects the fissure with the lower level.

The Galeria dels Enllaços seems to close a few metres after the fissure, but by climbing up a passage while dragging ourselves along a slippery flowstone we find its continuation, although it ends about 25 metres later; shortly before, on the left side of a small chamber, a passage between formations allows us to access a gallery of reduced dimensions that later widens and forks: to the right, in a descending stretch, we would reach the Pou de Sand. Continuing to the left we climb up a couple of steps and reach a chamber that belongs to the upper level. From both ends of the chamber continuations emerge: on one side we would reach the Sala Bernades and on the other the Riu Vell.

If we continue beyond the Pou de Sand (the accesses have already been described), we will reach a fork from which two two branches emerge that give rise to the so-called Riu Nou and Riu Vell. The Nou has a meandering layout, with clear free-circulation forms, reaching an inclined chamber from which a gallery emerges that ends at 20 metres. The Vell has a labyrinthine layout, with important clastic phenomena. After an anastomosed configuration, it ends in a small chamber occupied by blocks.

If we descend the 7-metre shaft referred to earlier, we will access the lower level, formed by a long, heavily decorated gallery that ends in a partially flooded sector.

We are faced with an ancient underground river that has been excavating different levels over the course of time, giving rise to the different levels that make up the cave. The cavity is structured along a band of marble running NW – SE, which was surely the outlet for the waters absorbed in the Coma de la Font Seca, a place where the marble outcrops attain a certain importance. The narrowness of the karstifiable band has caused the cavity to evolve vertically, excavating galleries that often remain superimposed on the topography; some galleries have even been excavated at the very slate-marble contact.