The Rio Tinto Company Limited was one of the founding companies of the Rio Tinto Group conglomerate, which was responsible of the exploitation of the Riotinto-Nerva mining basin in Minas de Riotinto between 1873 and 1954. It was founded in 1873 by British capitalists to take over the exploitation of a series of sites in the Riotinto-Nerva mining basin that they had acquired from the Spanish State that same year. During the following decades, the extraction of minerals in the area experienced a major growth, with the development of various mining and metallurgical activities. Under British exploitation, the Riotinto mines became "a world reference". The RTC was the builder and owner of the railroad line that connected the mines with the port of Huelva, where it built a commercial pier to facilitate the unloading and transport of the extracted material by sea. Likewise, the company had a great influence in the region and the province beyond the merely economic. The harsh working conditions of the miners led to numerous conflicts between them and the RTC management. In addition to the Riotinto mines, the company expanded its operations to Africa in the 1920s. Wikipedia