Hello yes I am a geology student I would LOVE to know more about the photos and location!!!
Yes! About this place:
It's Las Médulas, located in El Bierzo, Castilla y León, Spain. It's a small mountain range (you can tour it in a few hours), or more like the remains of one. It did not appear naturally. no: It's a hill that has been DEMOLISHED. If you watch closely in the second (right) picture, all the mountains in the area are rounded and full of vegetation.
Thats how it should actually look:
And it wasn't a natural disaster.
It was the Roman Empire!
Sometime around 1st century BC the romans came to Spain and Portugal and saw gold. They wanted to have as much as they can, so they invented a lot of mining techniques. In this case, they made a lot of tunnels through the mountain and they FLOODED them with the water of a nearby river, tearing down the WHOLE thing. It must have been wild, to see a mountain be absolutely destroyed in a split second! And yes, colonialism.
In this documentary you can see a recreation (go to 2:49):
The red earth is a common thing in Castilla y León, btw :)
I hope you find this interesting and i hope i explained myself well. English is not my first nor my second language.
Have a nice weekend!
