Canal de Castilla: Esclusas 31 y 32 - Palencia, Spain - Historic Hand Operated Sluice Gates on Waymarking.com

The Canal de Castilla is an engineering work built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from an old project that wanted to communicate the plateau with the exterior through an interior navigation path across the Castilian plateau.
The main reason was, among others, to release the surplus grain and thus be able to take advantage of a wealth that would otherwise be lost.
Today it has as its main use the irrigation of a large area in the provinces of Palencia, Valladolid and Burgos, although some uses such as tourism begin to be implemented seriously in isolated points of its route.
Throughout its 207 km. 49 locks are distributed, which save a maximum difference of 141,90 m., 4 aqueducts, 3 dams, 66 bridges, 4 docks, docks, flour and paper mills, a fulling mill, a forge, several power plants, several shipyards and dykes dry.
The definitive project was signed in 1752 by Antonio de Ulloa and
Carlos Lemaur, a French engineer who did great works in Spain as Despeñaperros pass, in Sierra Morena. Due to the scale of the work, to poor economic management during the works by the State, wars, etc., the works were extended for almost a hundred years, although a good stretch was in use since 1792.
The appearance of the railroad was gradually displacing in importance the canal, which eventually closed to traffic in 1959. But by then the social and economic profile of its area of ??influence had changed, with the Canal being one of the
first experiments of the Industrial era in Spain and leaving a rich heritage that is lost by abandonment.
The route of the Canal has an inverted Y shape and its vertices are:
Alar del Rey, Medina de Rioseco and Valladolid.
The set is actually made up of three channels:
The North Channel (Alar del Rey- Ribas de Campos)
The Canal de Campos (Ribas de Campos- Medina de Rioseco, passing through Paredes de Nava.)
The South Channel (Ribas de Campos-Valladolid)

Name of Waterway.: Canal de Castilla Roughly when was the Waterway created?: 1792 Is this waterway working?: Working What is the condition of the sluice gate?: Reasonable What is/was the water used for?: Irrigation

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