Coves de Mura

It is said that around the year 1850 a farmer from Mura saw that very often birds came and went and disappeared among some brambles, at the foot of some rocks. Full of curiosity they rummaged among the brambles and saw a hole through which one entered with great difficulty. They widened the entrance and in a short time the cave was much visited.

The first written reference about the cavity is given by Casiano del Prado in 1864 and it immediately appears in all the later old speleological catalogues (Puig y Larraz; Font i Sagué; Faura i Sans), being mentioned and visited several times by members of the incipient Catalan excursionist movement of the end of the 19th century.

It seems that the first speleological visit was the one made by M. Faura i Sans in August 1908. In April 1911, a group of members of the new Centre Excursionista de Terrassa, led by Domènec Palet i Barba, made an excursion of a scientific nature and among other objectives they visited the cavity, making the first topographic sketch that is known. The results of this excursion are collected in the work “Excursió geològica i espeleològica a Mura i contorns”.

Due to the little respect of the people who visited it, in 1919 the owner of the land where the cave is located, Mr. Armengou, from Manresa, had the cavity closed by putting a door on it. The key was held by the sharecropper Francesc Piqué, of the masia de la Vila. Some price rates were established (up to two visitors: 1 pesseta per person; up to five, 75 cèntims; up to twelve, 50 cèntims and for more than twelve there was a price reduction proportional to the number of visitors. After some years that door disappeared and the current grille was placed around the mid-1980s.

On 4 March 1934 it was visited and studied by a large group of members of the Club Muntanyenc Barcelonès, who the following year published a detailed work about the cavity.