Puente de Praga: The River Set Free
Why is it significant?
From the Puente de Praga, look down at the water itself: reeds and willows on little islands of gravel, the current braiding around them, perhaps a grey heron standing perfectly still in the shallows as if it had been placed there by a landscape designer. It was not always like this.
Key Facts
| Place | Puente de Praga: The River Set Free |
|---|---|
| Address | Puente de Praga, 28045 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.39510, -3.70460 |
| Part of Walk | Madrid Río: Royal Bridges, a Buried Motorway and the Slaughterhouse Turned Arts Factory |
| Generated | Generated |
From the Puente de Praga, look down at the water itself: reeds and willows on little islands of gravel, the current braiding around them, perhaps a grey heron standing perfectly still in the shallows as if it had been placed there by a landscape designer.
It was not always like this. For most of the twentieth century the Manzanares through Madrid was a canal: straight stone walls, a flat bed, and a series of weirs that held the water back in long, still, rather murky pools. It looked tidy from a car window, and it was nearly dead.
In 2016 the city tried an experiment. It opened the gates of the weirs and simply let the river run. Within months the water level dropped, sandbanks and gravel bars appeared, seeds carried down from the mountains took root, and plants began to grow in the middle of the channel. Fish found their way up and down the river again, and birds followed: herons, cormorants, ducks, and even the flash of a kingfisher for those with patience.
In a few years the most mocked river in Spain became one of its most talked-about urban nature projects, studied by other cities that had once poured concrete over their own streams. Birdwatchers keep lists of the species seen along the urban river, and those lists have grown year after year. The Manzanares is still a modest river. But now it looks like a river, and that is something no one could say for a century.
Across the bridge lies the district of Usera, home to one of the largest Chinese communities in Spain, where shop signs in Chinese characters line the streets and the Lunar New Year has become a neighbourhood festival. That is a walk for another day. For now, stay on this bank and keep going downstream to a low bridge with a curved concrete roof.