The coves del Salnitre are undoubtedly the cavity with the most history and legends in Catalonia and the one that has generated the most literature.

Known since time immemorial, inscriptions from different periods have been found inside it, the oldest: (Francesc Roca, 1511). In 1609, J. Pujades already mentions it in his Crónica Universal del Principado de Cataluña, without citing its name. In 1789, Francisco de Zamora, then chief magistrate of the Audience of Catalonia in Barcelona, visited Montserrat and, among other curiosities of the mountain, highlights his exploration of the caves, and with Pere Pau Muntanya, a fashionable painter and decorator, and with Francesc Remart, they made various engravings of the mountain and of the cave (the survey of the Salnitre is the first known work of this kind in Catalonia).

Abbot Miquel Muntades, in his book on the history of Montserrat, attributes to Gerard Joana, a monk of the monastery, the authorship of a manuscript from 1806, in which a series of observations and hypotheses about the subterranean cavities are made. Recent research makes the authorship of the manuscript by Father Joana more than doubtful, and it may possibly be part of the work directed by Zamora or by one of the monks who accompanied him.

The visit organised by Víctor Balaguer in 1852 together with artist friends of the Romantic era raised a great stir and the caves were widely popularised, to the point that a posada de las cuevas was created at cal Pepa de Collbató, from where visitors set out accompanied by hired guides.

On 16 September 1896, Martel and his companion Louis Armand were received in Barcelona and the next day were accompanied to Montserrat and to the coves del Salnitre by the members of the CEC, Artur Osona and Josep Castellanos. His description of the caves is very realistic and dismantles the exaggerations that had been transmitted from the visits of the middle of the century.

M. Faura i Sans with members of the Club Muntanyenc completely explored the cave on 25-7-1908 and made the survey (which until recently was believed to be the oldest) and which was not published until 1911. Faura gives it a route of 700 m. Two weeks later they accompanied the French botanist J. Maheu to different cavities of Montserrat, among them Pouetons and Costa Dreta, but it is not clear how it has always been said that they returned to the Salnitre, since Maheu had been collecting flora the previous summer.

The cavity was property of the State and later of the company Aeri de Montserrat. In 1928 the electric lighting was inaugurated according to a project by Walther Gunther and Carles Buigas, but following the outbreak of the war of 1936 it was dismantled.

Between 1946 and 1952, N. Llopis Lladó and Josep M. Thomas carried out an extensive study of the area and produced a new survey, all of which was published in 1953. At that time they gave it a route of 530 m.

Both the survey by Faura (1908) and that by Thomas and Llopis (1952) have been redrawn and adapted in different versions to illustrate some works and tourist brochures about the cave.

It was not until 1977 that members of the SIRE-UEC Sants again produced a fairly detailed survey of the cave. They give it a route of 549 m.

For years the cave could be visited with an accompanying guide and with acetylene lamps (what we called carburers). Finally, in 1985 the Generalitat de Catalunya took charge of a new fitting-out and lighting, transferring management to the ajuntament de Collbató.

Finally, in 1988, members of the ERE-CEC carried out, commissioned by the Servei Geològic de Catalunya, an Estudi de les possibilitats d'educació ambiental de la Cova del Salnitre which includes a very accurate and fully detailed survey of the whole set of galleries, which is calculated to present a total route of 958 m and a height difference of 42.7 m (-19.2/+23.5). This survey, however, was not published until 20 years later.