Jarama River

The Jarama is a river in the Iberian Peninsula, one of the most important tributaries of the Tagus. It is born in the foothills of the Peña Cebollera. It runs through the Spanish provinces of Guadalajara and Madrid and it is the longest river of those that run through the latter, crossing it from north to south in its eastern half, serving some of its boundary sections. between Madrid and Guadalajara. Its main tributaries are, on the right bank, the Lozoya, Guadalix and Manzanares rivers; and, to the left, the Jaramilla, the Henares and the Tajuña.

Currently, the Jarama and its surroundings constitute the only biological corridor that crosses the Community of Madrid from north to south, playing a fundamental role in its delicate ecological balance, so affected by its very important urban and industrial activity.

Geography

Lozoya River mouth, left, in the Jarama during the rainy season of February 1978

The Jarama valley is characterized by the breadth of its terraces and its fertility, already announcing a typical irrigated landscape still mixed with rainfed agriculture.

From the lithological point of view, the presence of limestone in the Torrelaguna and Patones area stands out, which contrasts with the slates, gneiss and schists of the upper part. Since then, a wide clayey plain has opened up on the right bank and marly on the left, where it is the limit of the Alcarria páramo.

Course of the river

High course of the Jarama, in its passage through the hill of Montejo, in winter

In the first section of its route, it borders the Montejo beech forest, constituting the limit between the provinces of Madrid and Guadalajara.

It enters the province of Guadalajara at the height of La Hiruela, running through Colmenar de la Sierra, Matallana, where it receives the waters of the Jaramilla river on its left bank, and El Vado, where its waters are dammed in the reservoir that bears the name of the old flooded population. It is again the limit between the provinces of Madrid and Guadalajara when it receives the flow of the Lozoya River, shortly before reaching the height of the town of Patones de Abajo, where its middle section begins. From here, it follows a north-south direction, and upon reaching the municipality of Talamanca de Jarama, it enters the Community of Madrid, leaving the municipality of Madrid on its right at the height of the Madrid-Barajas airport. The river had to be slightly diverted during the last expansion of the airport, in order to build runway 14L/32R. This medium stretch, with a low slope, ends in the municipality of San Fernando de Henares. After the airport, it receives its main tributaries: Henares, Manzanares and Tajuña. Half a kilometer downstream from the mouth of the Manzanares is the Rey dam (located in Rivas-Vaciamadrid), which is a dam from which the Real Acequia del Jarama is supplied, which irrigates the low fertile plain of this river on its right bank.. Finally it flows into the Tagus in the municipality of Aranjuez, downstream from that town.

Reservoirs

Vado reservoir

Apart from the reservoirs of El Vado and the Presa del Rey, currently in use, along the river there are a few more whose structures are visible, although their use has ceased in many of them. In the upper part of the river, in the vicinity of La Hiruela, there is a flour mill that has been restored and that diverts the river water through a channel. It is part of the tourist attractions of this town. In the surroundings there are ruins of several more mills. Continuing down the river, and shortly after the Lozoya flows into it, there is a curious reservoir that normally keeps its gates open. It is the catchment dam for the Ranney wells, also called the Valdentales reservoir. These wells capture the water filtered by the sandy bed of the river, and have not been used by the Canal de Isabel II in recent years. A little further down a small weir, located next to a suspension bridge, fed a cad that operated a flour mill located next to the road bridge that connects Torremocha de Jarama with Uceda and is currently used for holding "events" 3. 4;.

Further down in the Caraquiz urbanization there is a new loop creating what is known as "El Lago de Caraquiz" for recreational use. A little further down, before reaching Talamanca de Jarama, a new dam feeds a channel that is used for irrigation and which also moved a mill. As a curiosity, this caz passes under the Roman bridge of Talamanca de Jarama.

Valdentales reservoir computers

But if there is something that has proliferated in the Jarama River, it has been the large reservoirs designed and that have remained on paper. On July 21, 1954, the project for the Bonaval reservoir and the preliminary project for the Matallana reservoir were technically approved. The latter was intended to be used in combination with that of El Vado, just as in Lozoya it was done then with that of Villar and Puentes Viejas, with a system of perimeter channels that diverted the murky waters of El Vado. The one in Bonaval would serve to dam the turbid waters derived and be able to be later used for irrigation. Neither has been executed so far. The 150 hm³ Matallana reservoir project has been dusted off on several occasions: in 1993 by Joaquín Leguina and later by Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, but its environmental impact is a major obstacle to its construction. Finally, there was also a project for another even larger reservoir in the middle Jarama located a few kilometers before the influx of the Lozoya and which intended to dam 280 hm³, part of it transferred from the Sorbe and which was intended to be completed around 1978. From this Only a few ditches on both sides of the river have remained from the project, totaling about 700 m and which were executed to study its foundations.

Etymology

El Jarama at its pass through the municipality of San Martín de la Vega

The root sar-, "to flow, flow", gives a name in different Indo-European languages, such as in Sanskrit sará- "liquid, fluid", sarit-, "stream", Greek oros and Latin serum, "milky liquid". Hydronyms derived from that root, are found in the Sar fountain (Santa María del Campo, Burgos); the Sarrión stream (Coaña, Asturias); Sara stream (Rodeiro, Pontevedra), Sarria (Lugo); the Sora spring (Langás, Zaragoza); and with the initial alteration /S/ of the Arabic we have, for example, the Jarama river. There is also the Sarno River in the Gulf of Naples and the most important tributary of the Rhine River, the Sarre River in French or the Saar River in German.

In the case of Spain the root "*ser- / *sor-" It is attributed to the ancient European, a language that also shapes most of the hydronymy of the other Mediterranean peninsulas, the Italic and the Balkans and that in Spain only had the exceptions of the Iberian regions of Aragon, Catalonia and Levante.

Some authors also indicate that the term Jarama derives from a Berber word that means border river or nobody's river, a role played by the northern zone of the river between the centuries IX and XII. In the territory between Medinaceli and Madrid, including Alcalá, Guadalajara and the space between the Jarama and Henares valleys, IX and X the Banu Salim clan, belonging to the Berber Masmuda tribe, who exercised their rule in the name of the Umayyads, protecting the region from the revolts of the muladíes from Toledo and the Berbers of Santaver.^{[citation required]}

History and heritage

Winned by the river in the 1970s

The middle basin of the Jarama valley has a cultural and natural heritage of great importance, such as the Andalusian watchtowers (stone watchtowers located in strategic places), the El Atazar reservoir, the surroundings of Patones and the forest of Torrelaguna cork oaks.

Riverside ecosystems constitute ecological corridors that connect different ecosystems and facilitate the movement of many vertebrate species. The human groups of the Pleistocene have not been oblivious to these advantages of the fluvial environment. Certain activities carried out by human groups during the Pleistocene in the fluvial valleys provided an archaeological record that could be preserved by the fluvial environment. The lower section of the Jarama valley has one of the most complete Paleolithic records of the transition from the Middle to Upper Pleistocene in the Iberian Peninsula, also within the same ecological and geographical framework.

Paleolithic sites

The discovery in 2001 of lithic industry and fauna attributable to the first third of the Upper Pleistocene in the HAT aggregate quarry in San Martín de la Vega turned the Jarama basin into a privileged area for understanding the beginning of the Middle Paleolithic.

Description of the Madoz

It appears described in the ninth volume of the Geographical-statistical-historical dictionary of Spain and its overseas possessions by Pascual Madoz as follows:

JARAMA: r. in the prov. of Madrid: born in the tearm. from Colmenar de la Sierra, at the foot of Cejon and comes in direction from N. to S., dividing the prov. from Madrid and Guadalajara for some points; it crosses the tearm. from Matillana, the Vado, Valdesotos, Valdepeñas de la Sierra, the House of Uceda, Uceda, Torremocha, Talamanca, the Vellon, the Molar, Valdetorres, Fuentelsáz, Algete, Coveña and Paracuellos, and crossing the real road of Aragon under the so-called bridge of Viveros, passes to the view of the real site of San Fernando Henars by the left: until here he receives in his course the r. Lozoya by the der. In the ponton of the Oliva, next to the term. of Alpedrete and Patones; the Valtalon stream, which is born next to the Casar of Talamanca, and is joined by the left. izq., after crossing the term. and village of Valdetorres; the Galga, which is joined by the same márg. and in the same term; the Paeque, of Valdesotos, of wood; that of Uceda, which before was of stone and cut by the French troops, has been assorted with wood, and that of Talamanca of stone with one eye through which only one caz passes, for two mills that are in that village, for most of the r. runs on one side of the bridge. After he receives the Henares at the point where we have left him, he passes to the term. of Vaciamadrid and Arganda, at the end of the soto of the Piul, to the soto del Porcal, owned by the v. of Madrid, in which the r is joined. Manzanares por la der.; continues for the soto and vega of Pajares, belonging of S. M., for being of the house of Gozquez, where is built the dam that gives water to the acequia titled of Jarama of royal heritage, and watering this the tearm. that are his own and that we shall speak separately, follow the r. to pass to short dist. from San Martin de la Vega, go in and walk through a short piece of the jurisdiction. Chinchon's bass of the Dream, continues along the line of the soto of the Gutierrez and Parral, térm. of Cien-pozuelos, and follow on the lower part did O. very immediate to the v. of Titulcia, where it passes by vades and boat; to 1/4 leg. At the entrance of S. M. sotos land, the r. Tajuña is incorporated, on the left and after crossing the general road of Andalucia by the bridge Largo, concludes in the Tajo a very short distance from the real Site of Aranjuez. In this second stretch considerably increases the importance of the r.: its waters are permanent all year round, but in the winter it is overwhelmed very often because it has no margin, so much that for many pieces it varies its course, because it is sandy and bad terrain: it only has a flour mill in San Martin de la Vega, own of S. M., for whose reason is called the King: in this same transit has 2 Arez bridges of these two populations; it has many vades from May to the end of October, and then it cannot be passed; instead there are the boats of San Martin and Titulcia: the waters are very thin and crystalline and therefore it breeds a scellent fishing of barbos and bogas. This r. has been the subject of several trials to bring its waters to Madrid, of which we will take charge when trying what belongs to this cap.

(Madoz, 1847, p. 591)

Battle of Jarama

In 1936 it was the front line in the Spanish Civil War and the scene of the battle of Jarama. Numerous vestiges on the eastern bank of the Jarama recall the militias of the Spanish Republic and on the western bank the rebellious troops.

Nuclear waste dumping

Some areas on the banks of the Jarama River contain radioactive sludge residues from the radioactive release of the Nuclear Energy Board in 1970, whose remains were buried without markings at eight points along its route. In 2018, two associations they studied the state of the sidewalks, without detecting an immediate risk to health, but warning of the risk of future displacements of land spreading the contamination. As a claim, the associations marked the known burial sites. Internal reports from the Nuclear Safety Council in 2012 warned of the need to find out the current extent of the contamination, although this was not carried out.

Descriptions in the literature

Rio Jarama at its pass by San Fernando de Henares

The river shortly before its mouth in the Tagus

One of the most famous descriptions of the river appears at the beginning of the novel El Jarama, by Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, which won the Nadal Prize. It should be noted that the author of the description is not the writer of the novel but Casiano de Prado. The text is quoted at the beginning and at the end between quotation marks and in the prologue of the sixth edition, Ferlosio himself clarifies it.

I will briefly describe these rivers, starting with Jarama: their first sources are in the gneis of the southern slope of Somosierra, between Cerro de la Cebollera and Excommunion. It runs through the Province of Madrid, La Hiruela and the mills of Montejo de la Sierra and Pradeña del Rincón. He then enters Guadalajara, passing through silorian slates, to the Convent that was Bonaval. Penetra for large constraints in the limestone strip of the cretaceous – extension of the Ponton de la Oliva, which is directed by Tamajón to Congostrina towards Sigüenza. He joins the Lozoya a little lower than the Ponton de la Oliva. It then twists south and makes the vein of Torrelaguna, leaving Uceda to the left, eighty meters higher, where there is a wooden bridge. Since joining the Lozoya, it serves as a limit to the two provinces. It is located in Madrid, a few kilometers up from the Espartal, already in the strip of flood sands of the quaternary time, and its waters divagan by an undecided channel, without taking advantage of agriculture. In Talamanca, it was only possible to make with them a very short acequia, to give movement to a two-stone mill. He has a bridge in the Talamanca itself, now useless, because the river refused him long years ago and opened another way. From Talamanca to Paracuellos you pass the river through different boats, to the Puente Viveros, where you cross the road of Aragón-Cataluña, in the kilometer sixteen from Madrid...

Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, The Jarama1955.