The mayor of La Orotava, Francisco Linares, announces that the municipality will recover the aqueduct of the Colombo neighborhood, a historical element unknown to many villagers and that is part of the local cultural heritage. The consistory has the necessary reports, signed by the municipal technician of Historical Heritage, to request financial support from the Cabildo and the Government of the Canary Islands in order to be able to undertake the conditioning and conservation project.
Linares considers that this space is part of the manifestations of diverse nature and functionality that make up the cultural heritage of the Canary Islands, “so its rehabilitation involves not only the recovery and dissemination of an element of great historical importance for the town, still unknown to a good part of the population, but also the revaluation of a unique infrastructure based on its morphological characteristics ”, Francisco Linares emphasizes.
The construction of the Colombo Aqueduct (it is part of the hydroelectric plant) –of which only a small section remains– dates back to 1934. It arises from the need to municipalize the water supply service. It was part of one of the phases of the network that was to produce the necessary flow to generate the electricity supply with guarantees in the neighborhoods of La Villa, which was written by the engineer Rafael de Villa y Calzadilla. La Orotava was the first municipality on the island to have an electricity supply, with its first headquarters in the Planta Vieja area, in the Barroso neighborhood.
The history
The historical data show that, from a diversion deposit located on the Camino de Las Maravillas, a two-kilometer loading pipe emerged, which would cross the land to the new building of the hydroelectric plant (then located in the Aguamansa area) , with an elevation difference of 486 meters. This guaranteed a power that would solve the deficiencies of the electrical service.
Villa y Calzadilla’s proposal was revised in 1934 and updated by the military engineer Francisco Armenta, to proceed to place an asphalt steel loading pipe subdivided into eight-meter sections and covered by ordinary masonry walls for external protection, except of the aforementioned section that runs in the Colombo neighborhood. Here, the accentuated unevenness of the land led to the route of the pipe being aerial, supported by masonry pillars that are still preserved.
Together with the plant located in La Abejera and the Pesador or distribution tank –an outstanding engineering work in terms of its morphology and functionality–, this aqueduct «is an element of significant heritage interest from a historical and ethnographic point of view in the framework of a relevant engineering work ”.
