Sunday 12 November 2023

MAYTE & CASTELLAR DE N'HUG, THE LLOBREGAT ORIGINS

Today, The Grandma has received some great news of Mayte, who is spending some days in Castellar de N'Hug, a beautiful Catalan village, cradle of the Llobregat River.

Castellar de n'Hug is a municipality in the comarca of the Berguedà in Catalonia

It is situated on the southern slopes of the pyrenean range of the Creueta. The Llobregat river has its source on the territory of the municipality. The village is served by the B-403 road, which links it with La Pobla de Lillet and which continues over the Creueta to the comarques of the Ripollès and the Cerdanya.

The Asland del Clot del Moro cement factory, now closed along with the railway line which linked it to Guardiola de Berguedà, is a notable example of Modernist industrial architecture. The Roman church of Sant Vincenç de Rus conserves some original mural paintings.

The Llobregat is the second longest river in Catalonia, after the Ter. It flows into the Mediterranean south of the city of Barcelona. Its name could have originated in an ancient Latin word meaning dark, muddy or slippery, or from Rubricatus, red.

The Llobregat originates at an elevation of 1,259 metres in the Serra del Cadí, within the limits of Castellar de n'Hug municipality, Berguedà comarca. The total length of the river is over 170 kilometres

At Martorell, the Roman Via Augusta crosses the river on the Devil's bridge, which dates from the High Middle Ages in its current form. The C-16 highway is also known as the 'Llobregat Axis', in Catalan Eix del Llobregat, for its largest stretch follows the valley of the Llobregat.

More information: Catalunya

The river ends in the Mediterranean Sea forming the Llobregat Delta, in the municipality of El Prat de Llobregat, near Barcelona on the left bank. The delta provided a large extension of fertile land close to the city of Barcelona, but is now largely paved, urbanized and covered by infrastructure such as the Barcelona-El Prat international Airport.

The Llobregat is heavily managed in its lower course and water that was previously lost to the sea is now pumped upstream to increase the natural flow, recharge the river delta wetlands and control seawater incursion.

The Via Augusta (also known as the Via Herculea or Via Exterior) was the longest and busiest of the major roads built by the Romans in ancient Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula). According to historian Pierre Sillières, who has supervised excavation of Roman sites in Spain to identify the exact route followed by the Via Augusta, it was more a system of roads than a single road.

Approximately 1,500 km long, the Via Augusta was built to link Spain with Italy, running from the southwestern coastal city of Gades (Cádiz) to the Pyrenees Mountains along inland valleys parallel to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. As the main axis of the road network in Roman Hispania, it appears in ancient sources such as the itinerary inscribed on the Vicarello Cups as well in as the Antonine Itinerary.

The highway was named after the emperor Augustus, who ordered reconstruction of the previously existing Via Herculea (or Via Heraklea), which ran from the Pyrenees to Carthago Nova, and extension of the arterial roadway as far as Gades.

The works were carried out between 8 BC and 2 BC, taking advantage of what remained of roads that had existed in the time of the Roman Republic. Subsequently, it became an important communications and trade route between the cities and provinces and the ports of the Mediterranean.

The Via Augusta was still used by the Muslim occupiers of southern Spain in the 10th century, who called it al-Racif. Its route is currently followed by the N-340 road and the A-7 highway. North of Tarragona there remains a Roman Triumphal arch, the Arc de Berà, around which the road divides. At Martorell, the ancient Via crosses the river Llobregat on the Pont del Diable, which dates from the High Middle Ages (circa 1289) in its current form.

More information: Fem Turisme


 It is only in appearance that time is a river.
It is rather a vast landscape
and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.

Thornton Wilder

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