What is the gold mine where Miranda filmed, which is now seeking a RIGI for US$665 million?

Standing on top of a mountain of gold , with your shoes covered in water and cyanide—the famous cyanide—is not what everyone imagines. Nor is being 250 meters underground , in an underground mine. Clarín went inside Gualcamayo , the mine located in the north of San Juan province, where in 2009 the group Miranda! recorded " Tu misterio alguien" (Your Mysterious Someone ), the most-streamed song of the moment .

For every 1,000 kilos of rock extracted, there is on average barely 1 gram of gold . And even the resulting ingots aren't pure gold; the doré must be refined in India, Canada, or Australia to separate the silver and other mineral "impurities."

It will be impossible, then, to fulfill the request of the inner circle to bring even a nugget as a gift, not only because of the extreme security controls , but also because from drilling into the mountain to having gold in one's hands there are several months, kilometers and money away.

Two years ago, Gualcamayo was on the verge of closure . The company that managed it, the Colombian Mineros , had submitted its plan to the authorities. But then Spaniard Juan José Retamero , of the AISA Group conglomerate, arrived and paid around $34 million in September 2023 to acquire the property, reactivate the mine, and "exploit" the minerals.

What changed the game was the international price: gold climbed from US$1,800 per ounce to a recent high of US$3,500 in just 23 months. And operating costs plummeted in Gualcamayo.

The mine has ceased operations, but the company has begun a process to recover 340,000 ounces in stockpiled material during the 15 years of open-pit and underground mining, between 2009 and April 2024. At a rate of just under 120,000 ounces per year, the company would generate approximately $400 million in annual revenue for the next three years .

Sky-high prices, rock-bottom costs. Meanwhile, the approval of the Large Investment Incentive Scheme (RIGI) last year boosted the potential of the land, which is being constantly explored by Gualcamayo's Executive Director, geologist Ricardo Martínez , who is also an olive producer in southern San Juan.

This is how Minas Argentinas SA (MASA) , owned by the Spanish company Retamero, submitted its application to the RIGI in November 2024 to secure investments totaling US$665 million in the construction of a new underground mine and a solar park that will provide it with self-power . Its phased schedule provides for disbursements of US$251 million in the first two years, with operations beginning in 2031.

The work will require a total of about 1,000 employees , who will be housed in a camp 1,600 meters above sea level. It features dining rooms, a multipurpose room (SUM) with foosball, pool, and ping-pong games, a gym, and soccer and paddle courts. A mining worker can earn a monthly salary of $1,770,000 to $3,700,000 .

The catchy chords of "Tu misterious alguien" (Your Mysterious Someone) constantly resonate in the dining room and offices, even though no one quite understands the connection between Miranda!'s lyrics and mining.

The mine to be built below the already closed one is called "Deep Carbonates" and is a mineralized body at a depth of approximately 400 meters that has 5 million ounces of certified resources, of which 3 million are recorded as reserves —the difference being that reserves are the minerals that are technically and economically feasible to extract.

The business group that bought Gualcamayo also plans to build a gas pipeline and install kilns to produce industrial lime , thus harnessing the full potential of the rocks. Lime, along with water, is one of the key inputs for producing copper , Argentina's mineral hope, where massive investments are expected, such as those by Vicuña Corp. in Josemaria and Filo del Sol .

The future of mining in the country is promising: investments of US$30 billion are estimated over the next seven years , employment is expected to double, and exports are expected to climb to US$12 billion. That future is also unclear, because it is tied to the continuity of legal regulations and economic models.

But being inside a mine is downright dark, literally. Clarín travels underground in four-wheel-drive trucks to experience what the miners experience. There are 36 kilometers of tunnels , of which this reporter visits 7. Along the way, you can see several shelters , each set up between 500 and 700 meters apart .

The shelters are small compartments that can accommodate more than 10 people, and are equipped with oxygen tanks that last 72 hours . They contain essential food, water, a limited-privacy bathroom, and even a Bible to hold onto in critical moments.

This space would be one of the most remote places of silence and solitude , if it weren't for the fact that a group of miners is drilling into the rock to make the new underground mine feasible.

A few kilometers away, in the open -pit mine, the marks on the mountain remain from the controlled blasting carried out to extract the less concentrated minerals, and the containment work carried out to prevent the hills from collapsing.

The resulting material is loaded onto trucks that transport it to a conveyor belt that terminates in two crushers, which reduce the rocks to a half-inch and then deposit them in a leaching heap. There, some 80 million tons of rock were piled up for 15 years, and a cyanide solution is applied to separate the minerals from the water through a membrane that collects them.

The process for water and cyanide to filter through this membrane can take from one to three months, depending on the height of the pile. Like all human activity, mining has its risks, but they are controlled . Only 13% of global cyanide production is used in mining processes, and it is one of the few reagents capable of dissolving microscopic gold in water.

To the genuine concern of environmentalists, the miners report that the almonds contain a higher concentration of cyanide (up to 2,500 milligrams per kilo) than the solution they use (approximately 500 milligrams).

The problem arises when that cyanide is converted through combustion into hydrocyanic gas —for which there are sufficient precautions—which was one of the toxic compounds that killed 194 people in the Cromañón tragedy.

After separating the gold, it is extracted through an adsorption process on activated carbon and melted at over 1,000 degrees until the ingot is formed, which contains approximately 80% gold, 18% silver, and 2% impurities. Each bar measures 20 centimeters long, 10 centimeters high, and 8 centimeters wide, and weighs approximately 28 kilograms.

The myth that you can run away with a bag full of ingots, which will be useless without refining, is now forever banished.