Avenc del Pla dels Albercoquers

J. Ferraté, in his collection of Tarragona cavities (1918), mentions, in a generic way, the Coves de l'Hospitalet and of them, with no. 21, cites, in the index, the Pla dels albercoquers. He specifies nothing more, neither cave nor pit.

It is not until March 1963 that the first exploration (at least by speleologists) seems to have been carried out, and it was done by Josep Castell and his group (at that time attached to the GES – CMB) who, accompanied by the village blacksmith, Mr. Domingo Vidal, located the pit. Inexplicably, at the entrance they painted “Emili Vidal” (the paint is still preserved), whereas in the GES activity book it is recorded as Domingo Vidal. The data from this exploration remained almost forgotten until Castell passed a heap of data to the authors of the Catàleg Espeleològic de Catalunya, who included it in volume 7, recovering the name given by Ferraté and putting the erroneous name of Emili Vidal as a synonym.

To complicate things further, in a work on molluscs published in Speleon no. 17, a long list of cavities appears (with many transcription errors) where the Avenc Emili Vidal appears again, with a collection contributed by Castell himself and locating it, by mistake, at Horta de Sant Joan!. The cavity that follows in the list is the nearby avenc del Coll Balaguer.

Despite being a cavity little known to speleologists, given its poor state of conservation it seems well frequented by anonymous visitors.

Coleoptera: Paranillochlamys velox Zariquiey 1940 (data provided by F. Fadrique, BIOSP).