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Not many years ago, Pontons, in Alt Penedès, was known as “the Switzerland of the Penedès”. It could be because of its pure air, its medicinal waters, its apples, its altitude… Many people came to these lands to heal and change their scenery. Older people still remember it.
The town, the protagonist in La Vanguardia’s Readers’ Photos, is just over 630 meters above sea level, according to specialists, the ideal height for a healthy human being to live.
Pontons enjoys a microclimate and light typical of the northern mountains. Majestic crags and cliffs, forests, streams and ravines that hide a long history that dates back to the Neolithic.
We find testimonies of the long history of this town in the form of archaeological sites, hermitages, castles, masos, towers, caves and old mines of calcite, galena, sphalerite, zinc, iron and lead.
Going through the Medieval period where the first documents appear in the year 996 that give number and structure to the municipality of Pontons, it was acquired by the counts of Barcelona, ??Ramon Berenguer I and Almodis, in 1066, from Bernat Otger and Guitard Guillem. This same year the counts bought the castle of Pontons as a fief from Guillem Bernat de Òdena.
In 1111 the brothers Guillem Ramon de Castellvell and Arbert, called Dorca, swore allegiance to Count Ramon Berenguer III for the castle of Pontons and that of Òdena, which held their high domain, while the castle was entrusted to Ramon de Òdena.
In 1138 Ramon Guillem de Òdena gave the order of the Hospital some lands and houses and the church of San Juan in the new castle of Pontons; The document indicates the donor’s will to rebuild and populate the area of ??the Pontons castle, which had been depopulated by “infestatione paganorum” (due to the invasion of the pagans).
In 1188 Ramón de Òdena and his wife exchanged a farmhouse with Gilbert de la Granada within the limits of the Pontons castle, in a place called Les Solanes, which belonged to Arnau de Girona and his brothers. On the same day Gilbert de la Granada granted this farmhouse to the monastery of Santes Creus, Guillermo de Òdena, lord of Pontons, participated in the civil struggles of the first years of the reign of James I and signed, in 1217, the constitution of peace and truce from Vilafranca.
In 1271 the abbot Gener de Santes Creus acquired the castle and place of Pontons, which were sold to him by the infant Pedro, the bishop Arnau of Barcelona, ??Gastón de Bearn and Ramón de Cardona, as executors of Ramón Guillermo de Òdena.
The sale of the jurisdiction of the castle and the place of Pontons in Santes Creus was confirmed by King Peter the Ceremonious in 1363. Previously, James II, in 1297, granted him the privilege of extracting lead and zinc ores. In the 18th century, the site of Pontons was still the Santes Creus monastery.
Located on a cliff, under the Fonoll mountain, it is the old church of the castle and the parish church of the municipality until it was that of Santa Magdalena. In the Middle Ages it depended successively on Sant Pere dels Arquells and the Hospital order.
The Romanesque chapel of Sant Joan was built as the church of the Castillo Nuevo de Pontons by Guillem Bernat de Òdena and his wife, Ermengarda, and consecrated in 1075 by the Bishop of Barcelona Umbert de Cervelló. In 1138 it was donated by Ramon Guillem de Òdena to the Order of the Hospital. From 1271 the monastery of Santes Creus possessed total dominion and jurisdiction.
In 1968 the church was restored: during these works the ancient altar and a wooden reliquary containing a parchment with the date of consecration of the primitive church, in 1075, were discovered. Of this construction, only its chancel remains. The rest of the nave was later modified Sant Joan de la Muntanya is a church in the municipality of Pontons included in the Inventory of the Architectural Heritage of Catalonia.
The chapel of San Joan de la Muntanya is on the right bank of the Pontons stream, at an altitude of 720 m. It is a building with a single nave with a semicircular apse, blind arches and Lombard bands. The roof is on two sides. It has buttresses.
The access door is located in one of the side walls. The demolished vault has been replaced by wooden trusses. There are front and main arches and a triumphal arch that separates the apse from the nave. The basic construction material is stone.
Church with a rectangular nave, facing east by a semicircular apse preceded by a deep presbyteral arch. The apse has a Lombard style decoration, with blind arches and sashes that hover over a very high plinth. Between the bands, four blind arches, except those that face the wall of the nave, which have two. At the bottom of the apse there are two double-flow windows, and another two arched windows in the presbyteral arch.
On the south wall is the semicircular entrance door, made of voussoir stone. In this same wall there is a double-flow window, and next to the apse, there is a large buttress. The nave was covered with a barrel vault, reinforced by two main arches; During the reconstruction works in 1968 it was replaced by a roof made of slightly taller beams that allow you to see the old, rather unfortunate, beginnings of the vault.
The wall of the northern side raised on the rock has two large arches with capitals set on columns, from which transverse arches emerge, which were cut in a reconstruction, and there is also a door.
The entire complex is built with reddish stone, only worked on the portal, the arches and the interior columns; In the rest of the building it is made of ashlar arranged very neatly, in accordance with the architectural models of the fullness of the 11th century.
In 1968, August Ferrer i Dalmau, owner of the church of San Joan de la Montanya, in agreement with Jaume Torres i Batlle, treasurer of Pontons, undertook the restoration of the chapel. When the stone table of the altar was dismantled, a cavity appeared at the base that contained a small lipsanoteca, inside which were kept some relics wrapped with a green cloth and a small parchment with handwriting characteristic of the 11th century.
Next, Ferrer y Dalmau contacted the Monument Conservation Service of the Provincial Council of Barcelona, ??which sent members of the Monumental Catalog Service of the Province, led by the architect Camil Pallàs, to the site. It was at the moment of removing the slab or stone that he used as the altar table, to remove it a little, that the aforementioned lipsanoteca appeared in the center of the base, made of stone and lime.
This piece, kept by the Ferrer and Dalmau family, has a prismatic structure and has a sliding lid; It does not present any type of decoration and its typology, extremely simple and frequently repeated in this type of objects, responds exclusively to the use for which it was made.
In fact, the most important thing in this type of pieces was what they contained and, although in some cases they were made as true works of art, with precious metals, rhinestones, enamels, in this case it exclusively served the function of container for relics. Unfortunately, both the stone of the altar and the base had undergone changes after the 11th century.
The altar stone is much more modern and presents a lace that is now covered with work, which reveals that it had been made late and reused, perhaps in the 16th century when the cover had to be redone.
The base also shows signs of having been retouched and the names that are engraved around the small hole where the box of relics was located are very damaged and some of them may be very late.
These names, which used to be engraved on the days of consecrations, are here engraved in lime or mortar, and due to the lack of consistency of the material it is almost impossible to decipher them; We can only read one that seems to say “IGELA” and other fragmentary ones, “P…”, “DIS” and “ERTI…”.
The hole or hole where the lipsanoteca was located did not have the classic wooden or tile lid that was usually held with cement, where the bishop engraved his episcopal ring seven times. The same relic box had also been opened previously, as revealed by the relatively modern cloth wrapping the relics.
Instead, the parchment, folded in four doubles and somewhat damaged at the end, was fortunately replaced with the relics.
The parchment is in fairly good condition, although it has some small holes and is somewhat mutilated. It measures 10.5 × 10.8 cm and consists of 19 writing lines. It has the capital letter “A”, quite prominent, at the beginning and two other simpler ones towards the middle of the text.
The text fully adapts to the form prescribed by the pontificals: it includes the ten commandments, the Incipit of the four gospels, the list of the saints to whom the relics belonged, among whom it seems to be read Saint Norbert, Saint Pancras and the holy Masses , and finally the name of the bishop and the canons and clerics who accompanied him.
The parchment was found whole, therefore, the date of the consecration must have been omitted from its writing.
Located in an almost inaccessible place in the Pontons district, literally attached to the cliff taking advantage of a cavity in the Pontons stream gorge, is the building of San Salvador de la Balma, which is currently in a state of significant abandonment.
For some authors it is a chapel; by others, a hermitage, and others believe that its origin is military and that it was later used as a hermitage and chapel. This military building, chapel, hermitage, is strictly not inside a cave. It is built attached to the cliff.
Unlike other troglodyte buildings where the cave acts as a roof, Sant Salvador has a built roof, although the vegetation on the roof suggests otherwise.
It is a rough, consistent construction, but at the same time beautiful and made with skill. It has a single room supported by the perfect semicircular arch of the base nave, a room of modest dimensions with an approximately square floor plan. The south and west walls are mounted on round arches. There is a pointed barrel vault and interior almond-shaped arches.
The vault still preserves the marks of the reedwork. It also includes a rounded voussoir portal, as well as a loophole window facing the church of San Joan de la Montanya in the south-west. Access to the interior, extremely difficult for the faithful, makes us think of another objective than building a chapel.
Observing it carefully and keeping in mind the place where it is, it could be a military construction, a fortified lookout. Nothing in the construction responds to any parameter of what would be the original desire to build a hermitage or a chapel.
When it was later a hermitage, a gap in the rock would have served as the hermit’s home, since there is an excavated niche and other signs of use.
At the bottom of this cave there is a communication with the upper part of the cliff through the so-called Ral chasm. A wall lock closed that small fence, remains of which can still be seen, as well as the lacework of the door, which together with the difficult access turned that place into an almost strategic place.
As a chapel, the altar remained at the bottom of the cave on a protruding rock floor and the pointed arches can be seen next to it.
Access to the church of Sant Salvador de la Balma, currently privately owned, is downright complicated. The building is located to the east of the municipality of Pontons and is literally suspended from the almost vertical rock walls excavated by the Pontons stream.
The construction is visible from the road from Torrelles de Foix to Pontons, but the best way to access it is from the top of the cliff, taking a small paved forest track that starts shortly after km 4 of the aforementioned road and heads to La Plan of the Towers.
At the entrance to said town, next to a vineyard, there is an unpaved road in a southwesterly direction that heads towards the edge of the cliff, from where a path leads to the small church.
We do not have any news alluding to the temple before the 14th century and, furthermore, the documentary references after that date are very sparse and do not provide hardly any information, so it is difficult to know with certainty what type of building we are dealing with.
The exceptional nature of its location, almost implausibly attached to the cliffs, has evidently conditioned the characteristics of the construction. It is a slightly rectangular room, covered by a barrel vault and attached to the mountain at its eastern end. The south and west walls are furrowed by blind reinforcement arches, with a pointed profile.
The entrance door, for its part, opens on the north façade and has a semicircular opening with large voussoirs, well carved and free of any type of decoration. Below, the arch of the door extends along the sides in the jambs, formed by large ashlars, also of good workmanship and a smooth surface.
The wall that faces the Pontons stream, to the west, has a deteriorated window at mid-height that was originally a semicircular window with a simple opening. Slightly above there is a small loophole. This western wall is supported by a large semicircular arch, formed by narrow, perfectly carved voussoirs, which is arranged below, at a lower level than the paving of the temple.
The foundation work of the building included the construction of a wall below the aforementioned arch, to solve the problem that could arise from the existence of a cut in the cliffs on which the construction is based. This one presents a fairly careful rig; The thickness of its walls is made up of small, well-roughened stones, whose measurements vary slightly, joined with mortar and placed in courses of considerable regularity.
In addition, the corners of the construction, the entrance door, some low areas of the walls and the large arch of the west wall that serves as the seat of the church are built with perfectly carved ashlars, some of them of considerable size.
On the contrary, the wall that fills the natural rock cut is built, logically, with simple masonry.
The church of Sant Salvador de la Balma constitutes a typologically exceptional building. The place in which it is located obviously conditioned its construction, having to be attached to the rock on one side and bridging a gap in it on the opposite side, which faces the precipice.
The result is an unusual floor plan for a Romanesque church, almost perfectly square. We do not know who was served by the building that, due to its isolated location, could have housed hermits. J. A. Adell has even pointed out that it looks more like a military factory than a religious construction. Without daring to affirm a military origin, it is true that the existence of fortified churches throughout Europe in the Romanesque era is a reality.
Despite the difficulty in assigning a precise chronology to Sant Salvador de la Balma, due to the rarity of the construction and the consequent lack of parallels, the stereotomy of its walls and the use of pointed arches invites us to propose a broad chronological framework. within the 13th century, probably already towards its second half.
San Salvador was built between the 13th and 14th centuries. It is mentioned for the first time in 1319. In 1508 it is recorded in a pastoral visit. In the mid-18th century, permission was granted to collect in the vicinity to support the temple. In 1777 it is recorded that the chapel belonged to the Bernats fathers of the Pontons castle.
Whether classified as Romanesque by some scholars or located in less late times by others, Sant Salvador constitutes a unique specimen in the Penedès.
Santa Magdalena is a church in Pontons included in the Inventory of the Architectural Heritage of Catalonia. The church is located near the town center of Pontons, attached to the rectory and next to the cemetery. It is a construction with a single nave, with attached side chapels.
In both cases, the vault is ribbed. The apse is polygonal, and the roof is made of Arabic tiles, with two slopes. The bell tower is made of belfry with two arches, and contains a clock at the top. The access door is voussoir. The work was made in regular cut stone ashlars.
The baptismal pike has a slightly truncated conical shape with rather concave sides. It has a somewhat curved foot with a square base. The entire set forms a monolithic piece. Its decoration is simple, made up of three 8 cm smooth bands or bands that surround the baptismal pike, one in the mouth, one in the belly and the other at the base.
Between each of these strips, four vertical bands are observed that divide the surfaces determined by the horizontal bands into four equal sectors. In two of the rectangles thus obtained there is a Latin cross.
The church is of Romanesque origin. It was rebuilt during the 13th century, and later modified. Before becoming a parish it had been a suffragan of San Juan de la Montaña.
The Pontons farmhouse is located near the northern eastern limit of the term. The current building is a fortified farmhouse renovated in the 17th or 18th centuries. At the top of each of the four sides there is a protruding sentry box, and at different points on the walls there are loopholes.
During the first centuries of the forestation of the Pontons area and surrounding areas, the Pontons lineage dominated this space. Before the year 1330, we see that in the Jaume Sabater documentation, he is the lord of the Pontons farmhouse. Jaume was a converted Jew who lived in Barcelona, ??but we also see him signing notarial documents as a witness in Penedès.
In this year Ramon Bosch from the terminus of the castle of Foix, together with his wife Elisenda, come to Jaume, from the farm of Pontons, a census of five quarters of wheat, above all the farm of Bosch and two mills that have for the noble Guillem de Cervelló.
At the age of six, in 1336 he donated the Pontons farmhouse with all its men, rights and censuses to Jaume, who had a free allotment to his daughter Ferrerona on the occasion of her marriage to Pere d’Avinyó. We therefore see that the Pontons farmhouse becomes the property of the Avinyó of Avinyonet. Jaume also donates a house with a garden, located in Barcelona on Montcada Street, which is under the domain of the preposition for the month of February of the Canonica de la Seu. But the father reserves the usufruct of all these assets.
In 1360, another Jaume Sabater, from Avignon, called a knight or damsel, son of Ferrerona and Pedro, acknowledged receiving different pensions from dead censuses, in concept of the restitution of the dowry of his deceased wife Llorença, daughter of Arnau de Foses alias de Cabrera. He also acknowledges having received 26,000 m from Joan de Vall, a citizen of Barcelona. (the maravedí was the unit of account for the fleece or copper currency. Its origin as such dates back to the 13th century), for which he sold him a deceased census of 2,000 m. annual pension.
Of which 15,000 are for showing off a 2,500 m violario. in Arnau de Bastida and 11,000 m. that said Juan, by order of Jaime, gives to María, wife of Arnau de Foses alias de Cabrera, heirs of his deceased daughter Llorença, wife of said Jaime, as restitution of the dowry of said Llorença.
The same year, this same Jaume, sells to Joan Vall, who lives in the king’s house, a census about a spa located on Baños Viejos street in Barcelona: Jaume Sabater, alias of Avignon, gentleman, son of the late Pere d ‘Avignon, knight, sells to Juan de Vall, of the king’s house, citizen of Barcelona, ??a census of 2,000 m. that he has for the dread of the month of January of the canonical of Barcelona that annually receives 12 m. census. The sale price is 26,000 m.
This same year, Jaume Sabater’s brother, also called Pedro de Avignon, like his father, attorney for Jaume, Huguet de Avignon of the house of Ribalta, Lavit and other inhabitants of the Pontons district, undertake to pay a deceased census pension, which they had sold to Juan Vall, from the house of the king of Barcelona.
The payment of pensions and settlement of this census brings different judicial/notary confrontations between the relatives of Llorença Foses, deceased wife of Jaume Sabater and members of Barcelona: Joan Vall acknowledges receiving from Bernat de Pedra, lawyer and attorney of Jaume Sabater, maiden , of Avignon, son of the late knight Pedro of Avignon, the amount of 5,200 salaries for the presentation of a part of the census of 2000 annual salaries that said Jaume Sabater had sold in public.
On 12/17/1365: Juan Valle of the king’s house, makes a definition to Jaume Sabater, alias of Avignon, lord of the house of Pontons, of 400 salaries of a dead census of 100 pounds of annual pension and 5,200 salaries of price .
On January 9, 1374: Jaume Sabater, from Avignon, son of the late knight Peter of Avignon, sells to Francesca, widow of Juan Valle of the king’s house, a dead census of 200 salaries of pension, which he receives from the Old Baths , and another adjoining house for the price of 130 pounds. Jaume Sabater’s guarantors include the commitment: Pere, Ramon and Marc d’Avinyó. Upon the death of his first wife, before the year 1360, Jaume had children with Clara.
There is a royal letter that legitimizes the children he later had with his second wife or friend. It was probably done for inheritance reasons to know to whom the properties of this branch of the Avinyó would go. The heir son, the knight Pere d’Avinyó, was vice-governor of Catalonia in 1390.
At the top of Puig Castellar are the remains of the Iberian settlement of a Layetana tribe, founded around the 6th century BC. C. and that lasted until the end of the 3rd century BC. C. or beginning of the 2nd century BC. C. Some authors have assumed the possible destruction of the town by the Roman legions of Porci Cató during the campaign of 195 BC. C., but there are no elements that confirm a sudden and traumatic abandonment.
The town was a medium-sized group, dedicated to agriculture and livestock and, secondarily, to weaving. The numerous remains found, basically of Greek and Punic origin, confirm the existence of abundant trade with foreign peoples.
Structurally, it has an elliptical shape and consists of three longitudinal runs with more than thirty habitats, which suggests a population of just over 200 inhabitants. The least protected part was defended by a strong wall of stone and clay, one meter thick.
The rooms, dating back to the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, are built with irregular blocks of granite and slate, have one of two compartments, and must have been covered with tusk branches.
The town was discovered by Ferran de Segarra in 1902. The abundant finds from this site are preserved in the Museum of Archeology of Catalonia and in the Torre Balldovina Museum, in Santa Coloma de Gramenet.
The three hamlets were described in the work Els castells catalans as medieval defense towers, as well as three others documented in their surroundings, also in the castral area, now municipal, of Pontons.
The masovers of the Xamanet lime farmhouse informed us of the existence, in the vicinity, of other farmhouses with identical characteristics, one of them modified in recent times when an important part of the building collapsed. We have not been able to document these farmhouses, but we must think that they were property of the Santes Creus monastery.
All the other hamlets in its vicinity, such as those in the municipality of Les Solanes, located to the east, or those of Rimbalda and Valldossera, to the west, were property of this monastery. The forestation was carried out in the second half of the 12th century, therefore we think that these farmhouses would be built in the middle of the 12th century or at the beginning of the 13th century.
This chronology and typology coincide with other buildings described by Manuel Riu i Riu as a typical 13th century farmhouse, which he defines as a square fortress tower where the human habitat has been separated from the livestock habitat.
These farmhouses are much more evolved and with a superior architecture than those that were excavated by Alberto del Castillo in Vilosiu and by M. Riu y Riu in Castelltort. These most primitive farmhouses have a single floor where men and domestic animals live with a certain neighborliness and promiscuity. It is difficult to date these constructions through the preserved documentation.
The search for ceramics and other archaeological remains that could be collected on the surface in the vicinity of the Cal Rei farmhouse did not have any type of practical result; There were no remains with a possible medieval chronology, but there were remains from the modern or contemporary period that we could relate to its construction moment, from the medieval period.
The comparison with other constructions documented in the work of Pere Català y Roca, Els castells catalans, allowed us to confirm the dating (12th-13th centuries) provided by this work written more than 25 years ago.
The tower known as Cal Rei is located in the municipal area of ??Pontons, very close to the border between the counties of Alt Penedès, Alt Camp and Anoia, in a wooded environment.
Currently the building is in ruins and nothing prevents access to its interior. The existence of historical news about this medieval construction is unknown. Despite this lack of documentation, it seems clear that we are faced with a strong house whose main function was residential, not so much defensive. It is a building with an almost square plan, whose short sides measure approximately 8 m and the long sides approximately 8.5 m.
Its current height ranges between 10 and 11 m, and its interior is clearly divided into three floors, whose respective roofs have been completely lost.
On the other hand, the interior of the construction appears compartmentalized into two spaces by a transversal wall that reaches the same height as the perimeter ones. In the widest of the two resulting spaces, a diaphragmatic arch drawn between the east and west perimeter walls has been preserved, which must have contributed to supporting the beam that separated the first two floors of the building.
The transversal wall separating the two spaces is shown perforated by an access on each of the three floors. The lower door, open at the east end, has been recently destroyed and replaced by a lamentable brick and cement work. The doors of the two upper levels have been preserved in their original state, in a more central position.
Both the voussoir of its semicircular arches and the stone blocks of the jambs denote a high-quality workmanship. The access door to the enclosure opens, for its part, in the eastern wall and is also formed by a semicircular arch with large, well-crafted voussoirs.
All the walls of the construction, both internal and external, show a set of carved stones, of variable measurements although generally of medium size and elongated shape, well arranged in regular courses. The corners have large corner ashlars.
The walls of the building are lined with loopholes in numerous places and, in some more specific places, also with small lintel windows.
The construction characteristics of the building seem to point to a very advanced chronology within the Romanesque period, which almost certainly must be placed in the 13th century and which, in any case, cannot be earlier than the end of the 12th century.
As already noted, the Cal Rei tower appears to be a strong house, that is, a building conceived as the residence of some family of the small or medium nobility of the area. As such, we have to imagine that originally its walls would house, in addition to a large living room and some smaller rooms, different rooms intended for daily uses, such as a kitchen, a stable, a cilla (chamber where grains were collected).
In the foothills of the Escavellats mountain range is the area of ??Les Solanes, near the head of the Pontons stream. The Mas de les Solanes is one of the first possessions of the Santes Creus monastery in the area of ??Pontons, according to a donation made in 1188 by Gilabert de la Granada. Before, since 1181 the monastery received one eleventh of the bread and wine from a certain property in the municipality of Pontons.
Currently, the houses of Les Solanes belong to the municipality of La Llacuna, which forms, in this place, like a triangular wedge that enters about 700 m within the term of Pontons. On the Pontons side is the Les Solanes mountain, sheltered by the core of the Casas del Tiquet, with the Carbons stream, which merges into the Pontons stream after passing through the Roques Grans gorge, upstream of the municipal cape.
La Rimbalda (or Raimbalda), to the west of Las Solanes, is an old fortified farmhouse, today uninhabited due to the destruction caused by lightning in 1950. In 1980 it was completely razed, the remains of the farmhouse are located at the end northwest of the term, on the border with Querol and at an altitude of 791 m, near the Rimbalda pass, where the old road from Pontons to Santa Coloma de Queralt passes, crossing the Escavellats mountain range.
The Rimbalda was purchased by the Santes Creus monastery in Gombau from Rubinat and his wife in 1256; At that time it was from Querol, but later it joined Pontons. We point out that, near the Rimbalda, the Santes Creus monastery acquired the Mas Subirats in the year 1260. The Campdàsens farmhouse was also acquired by Santes Creus in Ramon Guillem de Òdena on September 2, 1260. It is on the plateau from the Cal Xemenet fountain, where there are a good number of scattered farmhouses, halfway between Pontons and Rimbalda.
Masia or strong house with similar characteristics to the neighboring Cal Rei. Located in the Campdàsens neighborhood, on a plateau that extends to the west of the town of Pontons, near the towers of Cal Xamanet and Cal Rei.
Unfortunately, no historical documentary news has been located about this strong house from the medieval period; However, territorially it was included within the boundaries of Pontons Castle, and according to J-F. Cabestany was most likely under the lordship of the monastery of Santes Creus, since many of the surrounding areas, with the farmhouses of Solanes, Rimbalda, Valldossera and others, are certain to have belonged to said Cistercian monastery.
Almost square building. The northwest side is 7.7 m long and the southwest side is 7 m. It has very similar characteristics to those we have described for the Cal Rei tower. The entrance is probably on the southeast side.
The type of construction apparatus is very similar to what we find in the other two towers: the ashlars are well aligned and the edges are made with larger and more worked stone blocks. It has three floors and is finished with a double-sloped roof. It has been greatly transformed over the centuries. Currently it is still inhabited.
I would not like to finish this extensive report without forgetting about the mines, Jerónimo Pujades already talks about the Pontons mines in chapter 7 of his book Universal Chronicle of the Principality of Catalonia, published in Barcelona in 1609, where he explains that they were exploited by the Carthaginians and Romans with large contingents of slaves.
Albert Ferrer in his study on the Batlle Vell de Pontons cave states that mining was already the occupation of the people of the area in prehistory. He cites galena, sphalerite and smithsonite as the main minerals for this indication, while he indicates as secondary minerals. : calcite, goethite, quartz, dolomite, cerussite, pyrite, hematite, pyrolusite, hemimorphite and hydrozincite.
Apparently the mineralization is located in Triassic materials (limestone and dolomites from the lower Muschelkalk), which have undergone karstification processes, and are arranged in discordance on the Paleozoic of the Precoastal Mountain Range and especially in the mountains near the town of Pontons.
Pontons apples are very popular and appreciated among the population of Penedes, especially for their old varieties that have been maintained since ancient times, for example: Espiriega, Morro de hare, Normanda, Reineta blanca, they are also favored by the altitude of the municipality, they are usually collected at the end of September and beginning of October.
