Barrios de Luna Reservoir

The Barrios de Luna Reservoir is a reservoir located in the Leon region of Luna in Spain. It takes its name from the town that is located at the foot of the retaining wall: Los Barrios de Luna.

History

The project was drafted between 1935 and 1936 by Luis de Llanos y Silvela, Engineer of the Duero Hydrographic Confederation. In 1945 the works were awarded to Ginés Navarro, beginning the same in the summer of that year. On June 15, 1951, the gates were closed for the start of the first damming and at 5 pm on July 31, 1951, said gates opened and the first unloading took place.

Sixteen towns and neighborhoods disappeared at the bottom of the reservoir: Arévalo, Campo de Luna, La Canela, Casasola, Cosera de Luna, Lagüelles, Láncara de Luna, Miñera, Mirantes de Luna, El Molinón, Oblanca, San Pedro de Luna, Santa Eulalia de las Manzanas, Trabanco, Truva and Ventas de Mallo.

It was officially inaugurated in 1956 to be able to establish irrigation areas in the Páramo Leonés area and the Órbigo region. The waters of the Luna join the Omaña River to be renamed the Órbigo River from that moment on.

Description

It has an eighty-meter-high dam, created by taking advantage of the narrowness of the land, which generates a volume of more than 300 million cubic meters of water, which is used to irrigate some 50,000 hectares, mainly corn, beets and hop.

The reservoir is crossed by the AP-66 motorway in the direction of Asturias, on which a cable-stayed bridge called Ingeniero Carlos Fernández Casado is built, which is currently the longest span in Spain after the Constitution Bridge of 1812 in Cadiz.

In September 2017 it reached a record low when it was at 4% of its capacity due to the drought in Spain in 2017, although it recovered the following spring.

View of the reservoir in October 2017.