Halite (NaCl, sodium chloride) from Súria. Halite or common salt has a hardness of 2 can be grated by the nail- and crystallizes in cubes that can achieve big sizes (even more than a cubic meter!). Pure halite is colorless, but the presence of impurities turns it to different colors. In Bages, halite is often reddish because the presence of iron oxides.
Most of the Cardona geological formation -a pack of stratums 300 m thick in the unfolded areas- is made up of halite. This formation spreads in the subsoil in a large area of the Central Catalonia that comprises the north of Bages district. Its unique outcrop is the salt mountain of Cardona, where halite is exploited probably since the prehistory. Halite was also mined in Súria.
[photo Joaquim Sanz / Museum of Geology Valentí Masachs]
- See halite speleothems in the mine of Cardona