Escletxa de Sant Salvador

Víctor Balaguer in his work Guía de Montserrat y de sus cuevas (1857) again speaks of his well-known visit to the Coves del Salnitre and, as was usual at the time, it is romantic in style and with a fantastic tone. But it seems that he also speaks of a “rendija que da acceso a una gran grieta” and places it inside the hermitage of Sant Salvador. This quotation gave Puig y Larraz grounds to catalogue in his Cavernas y Simas de España (1896) a: sima o grieta de Sant Salvador. This citation is repeated, without any data, in the Catàlech (1897) of Font i Sagué, the Recull (1909) of Faura i Sans and reaches as far as the catalogue of Termes (1952).

Known for many years by climbers who knew it as avenc or pou de la Trompa (de l'Elefant) and who surely gave notice to members of the GES – CMB who in March 1953 carried out the first exploration of which we have news. Surely those of the GES recovered the name Escletxa de Sant Salvador from the old catalogues and called it that. We are not very clear that it is the same crevice that V. Balaguer cites and places inside the hermitage of Sant Salvador, since that is not the case. Perhaps the oral information they were given was not very reliable and they meant that the crevice was near the hermitage and not inside it. After more than 150 years it will be difficult to find out... Despite being a well-known cavity, it has always been little visited.

Insecta / Coleoptera / Leiodidae

• Troglocharinus kiesenwetteri ssp kiesenwetteri (Dieck, 1869)

(formerly: Speophilus kiesenwetteri (Dieck, 1869) (collection of specimens by Jordi Comas on 12-7-1970)

With the collaboration of Lluís Auroux (BIOSP)