Day 10: Sant Joan Despi - Mediterranean Sea

On my last day hiking the Llobregat River, I am once again joined by Sara. In the morning we meet with Joan Bordas and Pep Clavero, both of which are expert botanists. Joan is the sixth generation in his family to work as a gardener/horticulturalist! He has followed a long family tradition of managing Jardinerias Bordas, since 1918. Joan and Pep first take me to the wetlands at Molins de Rei. They are a beautiful example of what the lower Llobregat could look like in the future. The wetlands are filled with cattails, as well as riparian trees common in the Mediterranean such as pollancre (Populus Alba, Populos Alba Nivea), Lladuners (Celtis Australis), Tamariu (Tamarix Gallica, Tamarix, Africanica). Unlike the biologists from the University of Barcelona, Joan and Pep held the invasive cane in high regard. They point out that the cane serves as habitat for other species and they dispute the claim that the cane stalls the classic Mediterranean succession.

In the wetlands the point out the presence of Salicra a plant with purple flowers that indicates relatively clean water. They also show me a native grass called 'grava de Sitges' (Paspaloum Districhum) that uses 15 times less water than the English species often planted by landscape architects in Spain. We also found Estramoni (Datura Stramonium) a plant used turn of the century painters and architects to get high and hallucinate.

I asked Joan and Pep about the possiblity of restoring the salt mountains in Sallent, and they assure me that it can be done.

I see construction near the Llobregat from here and to the Mediterranean. Everywhere there are machines moving earth from one place to the next, installing pipes or taking them out. I pass the water treatment plant managed by AGBAR at Sant Joan Despi, but I'm confident that Roger Lloret will give me a personal tour next week.

After el Prat del Llobregat, home of the historian Juame Codina, I encounter the spot where engineers changed the course of the Llobregat river in order to expand the industrial zone of the Zona Franca. This monumental feat of engineering, raises the question: if we can move a river, can't we restore it as well?

At this point, I begin to smell the salt of the ocean. There is more algae in the river than upstream, and the river islands and meanders disappear.

Here the Llobregat ceases to look like the river that I had followed for ten days. It looks more like an extension of the Mediterranean, flowing upstream. When the engineers changed the course of the river, did they really bring the Llobregat to the Sea, or did they allow the Sea to gobble up the Llobregat inland?

Finally, I see where the Llobregat meets the Mediterranean.
In the final kilometer we enter the protected area of the Llobregat Delta. A chain linked fence prevents us from following the course of the river, and guides us to trails in the delta created for bird watchers and cyclists. My sense of direction tells me that the path will meet the Mediterranean south west from where the Llobregat meets the sea. And indeed, by the time we hit the beach we see dikes guiding the Llobregat into the Mediterranean about 750 meters to our left. The path ends, and we see the beach, but do not have access. Instead we are surrounded by chained linked fences, and signs warning us not to trespass. Futhermore, major construction was drilling next to us, causing a horrendous noise. Sara and I are tempted to jump the fence, even though we saw a security truck slowly pass and give us a menacing stare. It was frustrating to walk the entire length of the Llobregat, only to be treated like a prisoner at the end. The freedom and liberty I had enjoyed over the past 10 days, following the river, and moving around obstacles, came to an abrupt end, as I was constrained by the urban insfrastructure and the urban norms that restricted my access, and prevented me from swimming in the Mediterranean, as I had hoped.

Day 9: Manresa - San Joan Despi

In Martorell I met with Rafa Diez and Roger Arque from Martorell Viu, a group of concerned citizens who work to maintain the environmental integrity of their town and its surroundings. Another major tributary to the Llobregat, the Anoia, is supposed to join the main stem of the river here in Martorell. But Rafa explains that in the 1970s the Anoia became so polluted, that the water treatment plant managed by AGBAR downstream insisted that the Anoia river be put in a tube and diverted until after the water plant extracted its water for the city of Barcelona. I was shocked at the audacity that water managers had to pipe a major tributary of the Llobregat. It also showed an end of pipe approach to water management. Like the desalinization plants being installed today, the diversion of the Anoia river effectively manages the waste but does not address the problem at its source. Following the diversion pipe, the volume of the Anoia decreases significantly. We saw fish kill nearby, baking in the hot sun.

Rafa and Roger also showed me la Horta, an agricultural field in the Llobregat and Anoia floodplain that the Catalan Land Instiute (Institut Catala del Sol) and the City Hall of Martorell would like to develop for housing. Many from Martorell are resisting this development, and they correctly point out that the Catalan law does not permit new development in the floodplain. They showed me maps of the floodplain at 10 year, 50 year and 100 year return periods. The maps are a bit suspect because they have straight lines in them and I wonder how these can be accurately drawn without a complete model for the watershed. I raised another eyebrow with Rafa told me that the engineer responsible for the floodplain maps insisted that he was contracted to only calculate flood boundaries for one side of the river. *!?. This conversation sparks my curiousity as to how these lines are made and my intuition tells me that politics and economic interests may be helping draw the boundaries in order to assist urban development.

The Roman Via Agustus, which connected the silver mines of southern Spain to Rome, passes through Martorell and crosses the Llobregat at El pont del diable 'Devil's Bridge'. Orignally built by the Romans, the current structure is medieval. Still, this point has remained a strategic center for both ancient and modern infrastruture. Roads, rails, pipes and other infrastruture enter the Barcelona Metropolitan region through this narrow segment of flat lands between two mountain ranges.As I entered the final and most urban segment of the Llobregat, I encounter workers building vairous infrastructure projects. First I meet workers who are doubling the capacity of the salt pipe orginally built for the mines in Sallent. The increased capacity will accomodate the salty waste generated by the new desalination plants in Abrera and Sant Joan Despi. I also encounter workers building a walking trial on the left bank. With funds negotiated from the Spanish Government in compensation for the environmental damange caused by the high speeed train (AVE), the Catalan Water Agency and the local city halls are investing in the left bank of the river for recreational use. The plan is to connect Martorell with the Delta. I was encouraged to see this work, and suspect that it will be a success, with considerable public use.

I also saw heavy machinery cruising up and down the river near Palleja. Later, an engineer told me that this operation is meant to increase aquifer filtration from the Llobregat. In fact, AGBAR and the Catalan Water Agency have being paying someone to plow the river for over 30 years! They have found that contaminants, which I assume to be some sort of hydrocarbon, coat the bottom the the Llobregat and prevent aquifer filtration. The heavy machinery moves the bottom of the river to allow water to percolate into the aquifer. It seemed like such a rudimentary, if not primitive method for managing an aquifer. It also contradicted what a groundwater specialist at the ACA had told me when she insisted that the surface water of the Llobregat was not connected to the aquifer at the Delta. It still is unclear to me how the surface water and aquifer are connected, and if the contaminants from the Llobregat affect groundwater sources.

I also ran into Manuel Alvarez, an engineer working on restoring meanders in the lower segment of the Llobregat. The funds for this project also come from the compensation from the high speed train project. The goal is to create small islands in the Llobregat, which, I assume, will slow down the river, increase filtration, and create habitat for biodiversity. The project is being executed by well known construction firms. Lluis Gode at the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) had told me about these restoration projects, and I was excited to see its execution on the ground. It will be interesting to follow the progress of this project in the next few years. There also may be opportunities to learn from this project. At first glance, the execution of this restoration project did not adopt an adaptive management approach.

The trail was dusty more unpleasant than I expected. I passed heavy industry, including the CELSA plant that melts discarded metals, and is a visual eye-sore in the lower Llobregat Valley. Being surrounded by heavy industry, I was suprised to run into Paco, a sheep herder who has been taking care of his flock in the lower Llobregat for decades. It was a shame that I ran into Paco at the end of the day, because by that time I was too tired to ask too many questions. I hope to run into Paco again someday, because I had the sense that he knowns the lower part of the Llobregat well.

Day 8: Monistrol de Montserrat - Abrera

Starting at Monistrol, the Llobregat hugs the eastern border of the Monsterrat mountains. The mountains of Monsterrat look like a geological mistake. They rise out of nowhere like fingers reaching into the sky. It is no wonder that monks chose these mountains as a refuge for reflection and prayer. These mountains, its virgin of Montserrat and the boys choir that sing for Christian worshipers, have all become symbols of Catalan pride. While most Catalans are devout atheists, they all respect the virgin of Monsterrat, also called la moraneta or the 'dark one' because her statue was miraculously found black. The widespread respect for the holy shine monastery of Monsterrat, even from the non-believing, is the product of the Catalan nationalism espoused by the clerics of Monsterrat. The Spanish dictator Francisco Franco had a hard time constraining the pride of Catalan clerics, and as a result, Montserrat also became a space for resistance, and where one could proudly speak Catalan.

The trail from Monistrol to Olesa was excellent, and I was surprised to see so much vegetation near the river. There are still dams and abandoned mills in this segment. I tried to visit a natural spring with sulfuric water but the guard who takes care of the abandoned mansion nearby wouldn't let me through. I was in a rush anyway. I had an afternoon appointment with the drinking water plant in Abrera managed by Aigues Ter Llobregat (ATLL). Earlier in the summer I had tried to make an appointment with them, but it wasn't until Roger Lloret made the phone call for me that someone at ATLL agreed to meet with me.


Near Olesa, I found raw sewage being dumped into the Llobregat. It was very smelly.

Only a few meters downstream, I noticed treated sewage released into the river as well. From the map, I could tell that I was close to two waste water treatment plants. Taking a careful look at the center of the river, aided by a bridge, I could see plumes of dark sewage being released into an already cloudy river. It looked as if a pipe with holes ran across the river, and sewage was being evenly released at each hole.

Downstream, in Abrera, I was fortunate to be received by the team at Aigues Ter-Llobregat (ATLL) who are responsible for converting the dirty Llobregat into drinking water. I asked Ramon Arboc, Francisco Valero and Angel Barcelo from ATLL about how their work might be different if the water they received from the Llobregat were as clean as it was in the Baells reservoir. They agreed that cleaner water would imply reduced treatment costs. To filter water from the Llobregat, the ATLL plant uses expensive activated carbon filters in addition to the traditional sand filters. The activated carbon is costly to purchase and maintain. Periodically it must be trucked to Italy where they submit the carbon to high temperatures to remove the unwanted filtered material. Every time the filter goes through this process, the Italian oven burns away a bit of the carbon itself, which needs to be replaced, also at a cost. This raises the question, what if one could show the connection between improved river quality and reduced treatment costs?

Angel Barcelo gave me an excellent tour of the miniature treatment plant used to test new equipment and procedures. I saw the sand filter, carbon filter and chlorination station. Angel explains that the pre-chlorination process was eliminated because the chlorine reacted with the salts to create carcinogenic compounds. He also confirmed that the new desalination plant being contstructed is a direct consequence of the high salt content in the Llobregat. I wonder if this multimillion dollar investment could have been avoided with more active watershed management upstream. The new desalination plant, using 'electrodialisis' technology from General Electric, is highly energy intensive, although less so than 'reverse osmosis' technology planned for the lower Llobregat Delta and the AGBAR plant at Sant Joan Despi. I left the ATLL plant very happy with the tour I was given, and excited about the possibilities of collaborating with those I had met at the water treatment plant.

Day 7: Manresa - Monistrol de Montserrat

Manresa is a medium size Catalan city with over 70,000 residents. The night before I took refuge in the Youth Hostel el Carme managed by the Generalitat. The Cardener river, the primary tributary of the Llobregat, passes through Manresa. Like the Llobregat, the Cardener is polluted by the mining industry and also contains high levels of salt and chloride derivatives. In the morning I had a close look at the Cardener, and it looked even more turbid that the Llobregat. It was disappointing to see the Cardener look in such bad shape, but I had to accept that from here on, the river I was to follow was going to look like a river of mud and guck.

Starting in Manresa I also had to accept more city infrastructure by my side. In addition to roads and highways travelling up the river valley, I was also surrounded by more gas stations, warehouses, automotive workshops and light industry. I was also surprised to find a golf course, and two train lines. Mid morning, I found a worker fixing a river gage on the Cardener near the golf course. He was subcontracted by the Catalan Water Agency to fix or maintain proper functioning of the gages that automatically took readings on river velocity and height, which they used to estimate volume.

Soon after learning about the river gage, I came across the first of the monitoring sites that I had visited with the team of biologists from the University of Barcelona. Only a few meters from this site, I met up with the Llobregat again. At the confluence of these two rivers, I was hoping to see something significant, such as a difference in color between the Llobregat and the Cardener. Unfortunately, I did not see anything of the sort. On the banks of the rivers I noticed that the city hall of Castellgali was cleaning up the bank, maintaining the paths, planting new trees and removing the invasive cane. In most places however, the cane was coming back.

The dearth of trails complicated the entire day, often forcing me to backtrack. In Castellgali, I followed a trail nearly a kilometer only to find it dead end at a water well. Local cities had several wells along the banks of the Llobregat, and today it became clear that many of these wells remain in use. Angel Miralda had showed me wells near the banks of the Llobregat and he told me that the water was not filtered. Chlorine was added before distribution, and off it went. I wondered what the salt content was in these wells downstream of the salt mines.

The only beautiful segment today came at the end. First, before Castellbell i el Vilar there is a beautiful meander followed by an ACA monitoring station and an industrial canal. Then, as one approaches Monistrol de Monsterrat, the peculiar mountains of Monsterrat loomed large above me. Having arrived at Montserrat, I felt that I was in familiar territory, and no longer so far from the Mediterranean.

Day 6: Sallent - Manresa

In the morning, Eloi Escude and Marc Vinyals from Prou Sal! offered to give me a closer look at the largest salt mountain near Sallent that towers 600 meters into the air, occupies 35 hectares, and weighs approximately 40 million tons. We were able to see the salt water collector at the base of the Cogullo mountain. Having heard so much about the salt water collector, I expected a huge pipe. It was disappointing to see a tiny tube less than a foot in diameter. How could this collector transport all the stormwater runoff during rain events? Plus, the whole apparatus seemed to be falling apart, and abandoned. Was it possible that this small basin and collection of pipes was the Llobregat 's only defense from the salt water runoff?

Eloi and Marc explained to me that the mine had recently expanded their salty dump. The expansion was largely contested by city hall who opposed increasing the amount of waste being dumped on the Cogullo mountain. The expansion was also complicated by high voltage electrical towers that traversed the area of the planned expansion. In the end however, not even these existing electrical towers could prevent the mining company from its enlargement, and the towers were moved to circle area of planned enlargement.

That afternoon I hiked toward Manresa in the heat of the day. For the first time in my trip, I felt exhausted. After resting in the shade near Navarcles, I continued south toward Sant Benet del Bages. Before arriving to the restored monestary, I noticed a swimming pool in the back yard of what looked like a luxery hotel. Jumping in was tempting, but I resisted. The trail took me away from the Monestary, and I was tempted to make a sharp right turn up the hill and skip the short visit. But instead I walked down the closer to the monestary, and noticed more modern buildings in the vicinity. Then I saw a familiar face that dominats the local news: Joaquim Nadal, the Catalan Minister of Urban Planning and Infrastructure. I was able to explain the objective of my research to the Minister and I also pressed him on the issue of the salt contamination of the Llobregat. He was aware of the severity of the situation.

Day 5: Navas - Sallent

On Sunday we continued down the well marked trail that connected the industrial colonies of the Llobregat. The town of Navas marked the first town of the comarca Bages, considered to be core of central Catalonia. Accompanied again by Angel Miralda, his wife and a friend, Hector and I had the morning to ask more questions about the river, its users, and history. Mid morning, near Balsareny, we encountered one of the Llobregat's oldest landmarks, the Sequia dels Manresans. This dam was originally built in the XIVth century by the city of Manresa to provide drinking water and irrigation. The city requested permission from king Pere III the cerimonious to divert water from the Llobregat and transport it 26 kilometers to Manresa. This medieval infrastructure include 30 aqueducts, and the canal from the Llobregat to Manresa only looses 10 meters in elevation despite traversing uneven terrain.

Later that afternoon, we passed the last of the well known industrial colonies, and said goodbye to our local guides. Discovering the history of the industrial colonies was a highlight of the trip thus far. In one old picture of the colony Viladomiu Nou, I noticed that the majestic home of the land owner and the factory was surrounded by bearen land. Not a single tree or bush was in sight. I was told that this was because of firewood collection. Whatever the cause, this picture from 1920 reminded me that restoration is not necessarily going back to the past, and that any restoration effort today of the Llobregat should consider that the area has already suffered considerable ecological alteration whose impacts are likely to remain.

It is well known that salt, NaCl, the same salt we put our our salad, is the most problematic contaminant in the Llobregat. The private water company Aigues de Barcelona (AGBAR) first to remediate the salty Llobregat in 1931 by creating a special commission to study the problem. Only six years earlier, in 1925, mining companies located upstream near Cardona and Sallent had begun extracting minerals from the earth and depositing their waste near the Llobregat or the Cardener river- its main tributary. The mines mostly sought potassium - a valuable mineral for producing fertilizers and explosives. The profitabitity of these mining activities allowed locals to overlook the environmental problems caused by the salt water runoff, especially during storm events, that frequently injected the Llobregat and Cardener with salty water.

In Vilafruns, I was able to witness the severity of the salt runoff. Only a few meters from the main stem of the Llobregat, a considerably large mountain of salt residue piled up into the sky. The base of the mountain was surrounded by a white gully filled with salt. As far as I could tell, this salt water drained into the groundwater, and probably directly into the Llobregat. I had been told that a special pipe had been build to channel the salty water to Mediterranean, but this work of remediation was not visible in Vilafruns. To be honest, I as astounded with what I saw.

In the afternoon, I met with Josep Ribera from the organization Prou Sal! He invited me to the evening meeting where I met the community organizers who have raised awareness about the issue. I learned that city wells have been contaminated by the salt water runoff, forcing the town of Sallent to invest millions in to water potabilization technology. The same can be said downstream at the water treatment plant in Abrera and Sant Joan Despi, where the newest desalinization and filtration technology is being installed in a freshwater river to remove salts and other contaminants from Barcelona's drinking water.

Another group working on the same issue, Montsalat, has an excellent webpage with more information about the historical grievances associated with the salt contamination caused by the mines.

Day 4: Gironella - l'Ametlla de Merola

Here I began the industrial section of the Llobregat. In the late nineteenth century, the river provided energy for the textile factories that drove the industrial revolution in Catalonia. Wealthy factory owners built their empires from scratch. First however, they needed a strategic segment along the river that maximized vertical drop. The higher the drop, the more kinetic energy they could capture from the Llobregat to power their mills. But while the energy they captured from the river was critical, they also needed old fashion human labor as well. And since these factories were being built along the shores of the Llobregat where few towns existed, the factory owners decided to build housing for the factory workers. This way, workers lived next to the factory, and could bring their family with them to the place of their new employment. And with the families, came the need for schools, entertainment and of course the church. The factory owners provided these services, and created small enclaves where the workers lives revolved entirely around the labor and services near the factory. Each colony was given the name of its owner, and with it, new, modern and mini-industrial societies were born, complete with cafe's, the church, and theatre.

The towns along the Llobregat have organized into a tourism board to promote the restoration of the colonies. The headquarters of the Concorci pel Parc Fluvial de les Colonies del Llobregat is located at la Torre de l'Amo at Viladomiu Nou. Neus Santamaria gave us an excellent tour of the home of the factory owner.

In the afternoon, we met up with Angel Miralda, who grew up in the colony of l'Ametlla de Merola. We met in Puig-reig and together, we walked south passing the colonies of Cal Marcal, Cal Vidal, and Cal Riera. Angel participated in an MIT-Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya study on the Llobregat. I had seen the study cited but had not seen a printed copy until Neus showed me one at the Concorci. I would like to obtain a copy because it was written by a team of urban planners with the intent of promoting the corridor of industrial colonies along the Llobregat. Oriol Nel.lo first told me about this study in January 2008, and I must admit that that conversation first sparked my interest in studying the Llobregat at all. I hope to contact both the Catalan and American coordinators of this project to gain more insight on this part of the Llobregat from a planning perspective.