The Geominero Museum is a public museum that currently depends on the IGME - CSIC National Centre. The Museum keeps a valuable geological heritage of more than 100,000 specimens of fossils, minerals and rocks, whose origin dates back to the second half of the 19th century.

Its objectives are to conserve, disseminate and research the richness and diversity of the palaeontological, mineralogical and petrological heritage from all Spanish regions, as well as from former Spanish colonies and some representative sites of the geological record of the world. From the 1990s until 2021, the Museum has worked in three areas:

• research,
• curation-restoration and
• education-dissemination.

A vocational and consolidated staff has been achieved to position the Museo Geominero among the national and internationally distinguished geological museums. However, as of Royal Decree 202/2021, 30th March, the Museum missed one of its primary roles: research.

The reduction in Geominero Museum staff, therefore, the capacities to take on museum objectives are also reduced (see the definition of a Museum by International Council of Museums, ICOM), the current weakness of the synergies previously created between researchers, curators and disseminators and a lack of expert staff on educational and dissemination activities, has led the Museum to become a mere exhibition space for exhibiting specimens.

It does not seem an auspicious future for a Museum that has been a main window to the world for such an emblematic, prestigious and long and fruitful history institution as the Spanish Geological and Mining Institute (IGME).