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Galicia

Villages flooded by Franco are visible again after a serious drought


With the reservoirs at 45% capacity because of the lack of rainfall, villages and archaeological remains flooded in the XX century have come back into vision thanks to tourism



Jan 24, 2017 - 11:09 AM
Someone had placed nails at the bottom of an Oak tree to indicate the tree had been used for hanging. The powerful image of the tree has been uncovered amongst desolation and stony ground because the dam at Portodemouros (Agolada, Pontevedra) is practically dry.

galicavillagedrought.jpg
Video grab


Some say the uncovered land and relics were in place when the villages were flooding on the orders of Francisco Franco to bring a guaranteed water supply to Spain in 1967. Curious people who remember their village named Marquesado, small but lordly, given by the remaining walls, pillars and the wooden pegs placed in concrete, are now able see and walk through following the extended period of drought in Galicia.

The Galician Hydrographic Demarcations (Galicia Costa and Miño-Sil) are on pre-alert, with the reservoirs at 45% capacity. The body responsible for the management and control of water in the Xunta (Aguas de Galicia) has also warned businesses and individuals to not waste water and ‘be aware of the dimension of the problem’.

Meanwhile, the villages flooded during the dictatorship have come back into life and at the weekends the locals return joined by curios tourists to photograph the dramatic landscape. Dozens of hamlets, roads, bridges, vineyards, suffocated fish, and pre-historic remains such as walled gardens which now shine under a clear sky while the other Spain is being flooded.

The Fervenza reservoir is now only 20% full, after seven months without rain, which has uncovered a megalithic burial in Baiñas (Vimianzo) where despite the time it has been submerged some of the stones of the dolmen which crowned the site have survived.

Another village which has appeared in Aceredo (Lobios, Ourense) the people who were evacuated from their homes at the time remember how they were moved to the church having dug up their loved ones ahead of the flooding for a hydroelectric dam, just one of five villages flooded here.


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