2 stops in walking order

Bridge

El Puente de la Pólvora (Spanish for the Black-powder Bridge) was a metallic bridge with stone abutments spanning the Segura River. The structure was completed with five stone arches on the left side of the bridge designed to span the river flood plain. Built between 1870 and 1877 in the vicinity of Javalí Viejo and Alcantarilla, in the Región de Murcia (Spain), the bridge was designed by the civil engineers Manuel Pardo Sánchez-Salvador (for the stone structure) and José Caunedo Sánchez (for the metallic structure). Both structures were built by Pedro Díaz Sánchez y Francisco Peña y Baquero respectively. The bridge was originally built to allow the transit of black powder convoys arriving from the neighbouring military factory and heading to the Port of Cartagena. Prior to the construction of the bridge, these dangerous convoys had to pass periodically through the city of Murcia in order to cross the river by the only existing bridge over the Segura in the vicinity: El Puente de los Peligros. Until the construction of the bridge, the inhabitants of Murcia complained repeatedly about the risk that those black powder transports meant for the city. In 1975, the metallic structure was dismantled and sold as scrap due to the construction, in 1974, of a reinforced concrete bridge few meters upstream.

~20 min at this stop

City

Alcantarilla is a town and municipality in southeastern Spain, in the Autonomous Community of the Region of Murcia. The town is only 7 km away from the capital of the region, the city of Murcia, and one of its peculiarities is that it is completely surrounded by "pedanías" (satellite districts or boroughs) of the municipality of Murcia like Sangonera La Seca, San Ginés, Nonduermas, Puebla de Soto, La Ñora, Javalí Viejo and Javalí Nuevo. The town is part of a low-lying fertile plain rich in gardens, orchards and citrus fruits, known as the "Huerta", which includes the valleys of the river Segura and its right-hand tributary the Guadalentín or river Sangonera and is surrounded by mountains. The Huerta belongs mainly to the large administrative authority of the city of Murcia but it also includes other small municipalities (Alcantarilla, Beniel y Santomera) that could not be omitted from the Huerta's framework either functionally or visually. The Paratrooper Military School (Escuela Militar de Paracaidismo) "Méndez Parada" of the Spanish Air and Space Force is quartered at the Alcantarilla Air Base, which is also used by the Paratrooper Brigade of the Spanish Army, an airborne elite unit called the Black Berets, which has a base in Murcia, not far from the air base at Alcantarilla.

~20 min at this stop