Mineral shows and fairs - Natura Madrid 2024 I: Exhibitions

  Another mineral show post with lots and lots of pictures 💎✨😃⛰️🔎⛏️ ! On December 13th of last year, I attended the 2024 Madrid Natura Expo (the 41st edition!), which took place at the Espacio MEEU, a convention area near the Chamartín underground station. It was my first time visiting this show, and my second large mineral show overall, after Expominerales Madrid 2024. There were quite a lot of stands with a large selection of minerals and rocks, faceted and cut gems, meteorites and tektites, and fossils, and once again, I spent a few hours going round and round looking at everything (and trying not to be overwhelmed by all the choices xD), taking loads of pictures (of everything except the fossils, which I don't really like unless they're plant-related 😅), and deciding on which pieces I would finally take home as part of my second (welp xD) December mineral haul (the haul will appear in a separate post). The show also featured a couple of small exhibitions, featuring a couple of cabinets with a selection of minerals and rocks from the Madrid region, and also a large meteorite and a piece of debris from a space station (a nice touch given that apart from being a mineralogy nerd, I did specialize in Astrophysics).  

 Thankfully, although there was something here and there, this show was mainly devoted to actually selling the rocks, minerals, meteorites, gems and fossils rather than promoting the pseudoscientific 'crystal healing' mumbo jumbo the mineralogy world is heavily burdened with ('crystal healing' is an issue that I very much disagree with). The products were also pretty good quality overall, although I did spot some treated and dyed minerals that were nor marked as such, or mislabelled (such as some infamous heat treated amethyst or lemon quartz labelled as 'citrine', or some unmarked dyed agate or howlite, and the like). So overall I left the show with sore legs and fatigue from so many hours of travelling and walking, but pretty happy with the experience and the haul 😄!

I didn't take any videos apart from one of the exhibitions, but this video by My Steps on YouTube shows quite a lot of the stands at the Madrid Natura 2024 show:

  The haul from this show will have its separate future post, like I said (when, I cannot say, there's a queue for the haul posts 😅), but here's a preview of the gorgeous pieces that I ended up taking home: From left to right, background to foreground, I got: A smoky quartz cluster; a specimen of forest episode on quartz from Alicante (Spain) (a holy grail I've been after for ages, and at last I found some!); a Congo citrine candle cluster (also my first candle cluster!); urarovite garnet from Russia; blue cubic fluorite from Asturias (Spain) (the most expensive piece of the haul, but I love my fluorite, so I had to); optical honey calcite from China (stunning piece, I can't stop looking at it!!); and above it: my first Ethiopian noble opal, a moonstone pendant and a faceted garnet gem; a raw rhodonite from Brazil; a small tumbled labradorite; a purple fluorite octahedron; tumbled ruby in fuchsite from India; and a Baltic amber pendant. And also a green fluorite pendant that's not pictured here. A rather hefty haul this time, and such lovely pieces!

  And, without further ado, the rest of this post is going to be a HEFTY picture spam featuring several of the mineral stands, as well as the exhibitions. Hope you enjoy!

• Mineral stands:  Also see these pics on my mineral TikTok.

Those fluorite slabs 🤩!

  Stand featuring Russian minerals. I got a lovely urarovite (green garnet, the rarest of the common garnet group) and a purple fluorite octahedron from here:

Lots of Ethiopian opal at this show!

They also had some of the only watermelon tourmalines I saw at this show, for steep prices, as is the norm for gemmy tourmaline (one day!):

  Also lots of charoite, a rare silicate mineral with a fibrous appearance and bright purple tones (these charoite slabs didn't make the final cuts, but they're lovely!):

  This stand focused entirely on gems, many of them very beautiful (I especially loved the garnets, peridots and amethysts, and also the aquamarines and opals):

   I'm not primarily a gem collector (probably fortunately for me, but it's only a matter of time 😅) and I do prefer mineral specimens to gems, but some faceted/cabochon gems I also do really like from an aesthetic point of view, so I did get my very first gem at a mineral show - A lovely faceted oval garnet with a deep red colour, from this pile:

  Several stands specialized in a selection of meteorites (as we know, a meteorite is a rock originating from outer space that has fallen to the surface of the Earth - or another planet or moon) and tektites (natural glass formed from terrestrial debris ejected during meteorite impacts), mostly featuring Libyan glass and moldavite (a rare green tektite which has had its price considerably inflated due to social media hype, especially among the pseudoscience spaces 😅):

 

  I'm not as pumped to get a moldavite as many other people seem to be  😅 (although OK, I wouldn't mind having one someday just for the collector's value and my completism, but it's not a priority right now). But I would definitely like to grab some meteorites at my next fair, for sure! Also, my Astrophysicist self would be quite offended if I didn't prioritize meteorites at some point when hunting from specimens for my collection xD. 

Also see the end of this post for more space stuff, as one of the exhibitions featured a large meteorite!

 

Assorted tumbles in several stands (the candy shop aesthetic ✨):

 

A couple of stands had larimar, another rare mineral that has become quite highly esteemed among the collectors:

 

Not as much labradorite at this show as I was expecting, but there was most definitely some! Here are some labradorite freeform slabs, including purple labradorite:

 This stand had quite a lot of stuff going on, and had some pretty nice pieces overall, from natural citrine and a lot of other tumbles to amber, turquoise, larimar, moonstone, tourmaline, and lots of Ethiopian opal. I ended up getting two pendants (amber and moonstone), and my first ever Ethiopian opal - a very small piece (all opals were 8-9€ per gram at this show, tho 😅), but with gorgeous green and blue colour play.

 

 Several stands also had several rock and mineral specimens exhibited in shelves above the tables. Most of these tend to be too large (and yes, expensive, but also too large xD) for my collection, so I just look at them and take pics as if they were part of an exhibition, pretty much:

 

Lovely sphalerite with quartz pieces!

  It was at the tables of one of these stands (don't quite remember which one) that I found my first ever piece of forest epidote with quartz ✨! I actually found two pieces of similar sizes in two different stands, but ended up getting the one on the left:

  This stand specialized nearly exclusively in cubic fluorites (mainly blue and purple ones) from Asturias (Berbes, Corta la Gallega), one of the main mining areas of Spain for fluorite. All the shades of purple and blue were to die for! I ended up getting the most expensive piece of the haul here, a specimen of lovely blue fluorites cubes on matrix. A bit steeper than what I've paid for the rest of my fluorites, but I didn't have any cubic blue fluorite yet, and fluorite is easily among my top 5 favourite minerals, so well, that was that xD.

 

Look at how pretty this specimen of purple cubic fluorite is ✨!

  This stand had some gorgeous Congo natural citrine, a smoky citrine point (left) and a candle cluster (right), and I ended up taking the latter home as part of the haul. I also got a labradorite cabochon with beautiful blue flash from here (you can see the one I took in the picture below, the blue was calling to me ✨): 

Some lovely amethysts, pink amethysts and celestines at this stand:

More fluorite pieces, some of them with pyrite, which I think is a lovely combo:

Lots of rhodochrosite at this stand!

  More fluorite! Some more slabs and a gorgeous purple and blue tower that didn't make the final cut, but that I kinda really regret not getting, because my gods, it's so beautiful 😭!

  More (expensive 😱!) Ethiopian opals:

  These optical honey calcites were so gorgeous! The colour and the iridiscence they have is out of this world 🤩. I of course had to get one (as well as a clear green fluorite pendant at the same stall):

  A cute diorama of Spain featuring some rocks and minerals typical of each region:

There were selections of various specimens in individual collecting boxes at several stands, as well:

These didn't make the cut either, but some lovely specimens of deep-coloured amethyst clusters from Uruguay in interesting shapes:

And rock crystal clusters:

  Finally, apart from the Congo citrines at the other stand above, I also saw some more Congo citrine points at two other stands. There was some heat treated amethyst and irradiated lemon quartz, both labelled as 'citrine', here and there as well (sigh), but overall there was not much, and more natural citrine than I was expecting! There will be a citrine masterpost in the future talking about everything citrine, by the way, about the natural varieties, my citrine pieces and all the citrines that I've seen along my mineralogy hobby adventure, and especially focusing on all the ways this rare variety of quartz is faked to be sold as genuine citrine in the mineral market. So if that topic interests you, keep tuned!

I also got the tumbled ruby in fuchsite at this stand, and the raw rhodonite at the stand just beside this one, if I remember correctly - which completes the haul!

 

And now for the exhibitions!

•  Exhibition of minerals from Madrid:

 The main exhibition at this show was "Minerales de Madrid", with a selection of several rocks and minerals from the Madrid region gathered during the last 20 years, and featuring quartz, orthoclase, calcite, epidote, arsenopyrite, prehnite, garnet, laumontite, apophyllite, pyrite, chalcopyrite, opal, albite, mica, stilbite, and molibdenite. See below for quite a lot of pictures of each of the shelves in both cabinets. And they had a piece of forest epidote on quartz, too, a bit similar to the one that I got!

You can also see videos of this exhibition here on my mineral TikTok: Video; Slideshow. 

•  Space exploration: SALYUT-7 fuel deposit and meteorite 🚀☄️:

And lastly, this expo also displayed a couple of pieces having to do with space and space exploration: Firstly, a fuel deposit of the last Soviet Russian space station, “SALYUT-7”, part of the debris after it landed on a town in Argentina after the station underwent an uncontrolled reentry back in 1991. There was also a Campo de Cielo large metallic meteorite, hailing from Argentina and dating from 4500 yr ago: