Read the document and answer the questions:
The chief coal district is that of Oviedo, Palencia, Leon, and Santander. The coal-field of Oviedo, occupying an extent of 230 square miles, and including a large number of workable beds, is of excellent quality, but as yet little developed, owing to high railway tariffs, bad condition of ports, traditional prejudices, want of skill and capital, and of a local market for inferior qualities. These obstacles will probably soon be overcome, and the development of the associated iron ores afford an important field of enterprise.
Iron is mainly obtained from Biscay, Oviedo, Murcia, and Almeria, but is abundant in other provinces. Lead is worked chiefly in Murcia, Jaen, Almeria, Badajoz, and Ciudad Real; the presence of antimony or of a predominating admixture of blende is very common, but Spain is on the whole the most important lead-producing country in Europe. Copper is obtained mainly from the Rio Tinto mines and others in Huelva; also from Seville, Palencia, Almeria, and Santander; but many other districts contain veins yielding more or less of copper ore. Zinc has been chiefly procured from superficial pockets of calamine in Santander and the neighbouring districts; but in the form of blende it is widely distributed in association with lead. Silver ores are worked in Almeria and Guadalajara.
The fact that more than 12,000 concessions of mines already exist in Spain, while a large number of lapsed concessions may be found, affords a better idea of the mineral wealth of the country than the enumeration of the mines actually worked.
Wentworth WEBSTER, Spain, 1882
a) What minerals were there in Spain? Where were the mineral fields?
b) What minerals were there in Andalusia?
c) What obstacles did the coal-fields have?
d) How many concessions existed in Spain? What were lapsed concessions?
CIENCIAS SOCIALES
