The cliff of Ribatallada is a vertical light-coloured rock face, approximately 200 meters long and 50 meters high at its highest point, carved by the stream of Malrubí at the eastern edge of the municipality of Artés, bordering Avinyó. The cliff is on the right or north bank of the Malrubí stream. The wide track that starts in Artés and runs along the southern slope of the Malrubí valley attains the cliff of Ribatallada in about 4 km. One kilometer further along the same track, there is the relative and even larger cliff of El Berenguer.
The cliff of Ribatallada displays the sedimentary rocks that originated at the end of the marine inlet that, in the Middle Eocene, extended from the Atlantic sea in the actual Bay of Biscay until what is at present-day central Catalonia. Gypsum from the Cardona geological formation makes the top half of the cliff. The gypsum precipitates along the shoreline of the ancient sea as it receded and water evaporated. The bottom half of the cliff is, older, bluer in colour, and more clearly stratified. Grey sandstones and mudstones coming from marine sedimentation that belong to the Tossa geological formation make it. The lower image indicates the stratigraphic boundary.
This gypsum is known as gypsum of Malrubí. The nearby quarry of El Freixe mined this gypsum.
[photo: Jordi Badia]
- See also the cliff of El Berenguer (Avinyó).