Cova Cartanyà

Known since remote times. The first exploration of which we have record is the one carried out by the Reus scholars Josep Iglésies and Joaquim Santasugsana in the year 1924. On this visit they were already able to observe remains of pottery and very soon the archaeological excavations directed by Dr. Salvador Vilaseca began.

Despite its relative speleological interest and its lack of showiness, it has been a cave that over the years has undergone a multitude of visits, which makes its state of conservation quite lamentable.

Among the different surveys carried out, the one made in the year 2004 by members of the Grup d'Espeleologia de Badalona stands out and which had remained unpublished until now, when it has been provided to us by our colleague Enric Porcel (August 2024)

Joan Pallisé (GIEM) provides us with the following note:

"...Apart from its archaeological importance, the cavity was the setting of an unusual and curious experience in the year 1969 by members of the speleology group of the Creu Roja de Tarragona, as it was a long test of underground permanence, supposedly without contact with the outside, which lasted for some days and whose protagonists were the speleologists of the Creu Roja de Tarragona, almost in parallel with those of Emilio Reyes, who in those years carried out various permanences in underground cavities such as the one carried out in la Cova de Chaves, near Barbastro, with the aim of analysing human behaviour in a situation of isolation.

In the deepest part of the cavity, there is almost no news of prehistoric finds, while it is worth noting the filth of graffiti left by a good handful of vandals with a long continuity of generations who have wanted to pass into posterity by making the main wall disgusting with lamentable inscriptions"