Bella Vista at Rio Tinto Mines mid 1880s.

Queen Victoria’s Birthday Celebrations

It’s the 24th of May, 1889. You are a British mining engineer living and working at Rio Tinto Mines in the north of the province of Huelva and your company, the Rio Tinto Company Limited, is a massive operation that is producing 10% of the world’s copper supply. It’s hot, swelteringly hot and dusty, and the pungent smell of the sulphur dioxide smoke from the open air roasting of the ore in teleras permeates absolutely everything. In fact, on the días de la manta (blanket days) the work has to be suspended as it is impossible to breathe or indeed even see through the thick toxic smoke. You can’t wait to get away from this inhospitable barren land, back to the fertile green fields of England, back to your family and friends. More than likely you come from a prosperous middle-class family, have studied at the prestigious Royal School of Mines or the Royal Indian Engineering College, and maybe even spent some time working on projects for the Empire in India, Egypt or South Africa. Here at the mines there are just under 10,000 workers from all over Spain and many from Portugal under the management of around 50 of you and your British colleagues. Most of your colleagues are Scottish Presbyterians which you find irksome at times due to their strict religious observances and seeming aversion for having fun of any description.

Things are tense lately. Last year there were protests, they called it el año de los tiros (the year of the shots) as some of the protestors were killed, and many managers couldn’t take it any more and resigned. Since the beginning of the decade the British community has been isolating itself from the Spanish workers and life in the village in a purpose-built enclave called Bella Vista with Victorian style houses and an English club (Club Inglés) where quintessentially British recreations are practiced. There is a polo ground, tennis courts, and a cricket pitch. Your social life is centered around the Club Inglés and you are doing everything possible to keep up morale and stay sane.

But today is Empire Day, the celebration of Queen Victoria’s Birthday, which has become a quasi public holiday in the region. The miners have the day off, the Union Jacks are flying all around the village and today will be a day of sports and festivities. And of course, the footnote on the timetable says: “Trains do not run on Sundays or on Queen Victoria’s Birthday”