Acequia Gorda, Paseo de las Palmas

One Sunday morning, early in 2005,    we set out  to look for the legendary Acequia Gorda, which is so often mentioned in history books about Granada but which seems to have disappeared altogether.

Before running, drinkable water was piped into the city in about 1950, people relied on the water from the Sierra Nevada channelled in by ancient aqueducts, or "acequias", basically trenches which ran through the town.  One of the largest was Acequia Gorda, entering the city from the foot of the Sierra Nevada to the east and getting its water from the River Genil.

By deviating the water along canals so that instead of flowing rapidly downstream through the river bed, it clung to the slope above the river and descended only gradually, by the time it reached the center of the town it was high enough up to then flow, by its own pressure, in different directions. 

One was down a slope called Cuesta de los Molinos, where several water mills standing below the level of the channel could fill up their holding tanks with it, and then release the water under pressure to turn millstones, to make the city's bread.  The bakeries were situated right next to the mills, so that the flour didn't have to be hauled on muleback.

From the riverside Paseo de la Bomba, we walked up the winding slope called Cuesta de Escoriaza and headed upstream (in parallel to the river, but uphill) until we soon found the acequia, flowing along the side of the Paseo de las Palmas.

Here, bridges have been built to get out onto the street!

...and a rusty sluice gate which was used to control the flow.  You can see the top of its metal structure over the footbridge in the picture above, and a full view taken from the other side in the picture below.  The channel flowing off to the left provided water for the elegant manour above it, now apparently uninhabited...  

The sluice gate, which may have been in use until the mid-20th century, to judge from its condition.

The empty manour, on the left, and on the right a crumbling Moorish-style gate to the domain's fruit orchard...

the canal runs through some cactus patches...

Both me and Don Valentino had a good stretch of our legs, his shorter than mine...

It is truly, a forgotten old canal!  The local residents often complain about the smells in summertime when it runs almost dry and there are plans to restore it.

Acequia Gorda finally disappeared under the motorways and round-abouts at the foot of the Alhambra Hill, so we took a short cut down the hill to the avenue and went home for lunch.  Next time we will try to find the place where it sluices off the water from the River Genil.

 

 

Reality is not as romantic as it used to be!  This 18th century-looking gate, built for some important purpose i have not been able to discover, now stands half-buried amid the traffic flow, with the old channel flowing somewhere underground through cement pipes.

 

Click here to read related excerpts from the book, Granada, City of My Dreams

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