March 31, 2022
In Céret: Monument du Canal d’Arrosage
This entry comes thanks to a comment on yesterday’s post, asking about the monument in one of the photographs: Bob thought it looked like a war memorial but was puzzled by its date of 1861. I confessed to not having looked at it more closely at the time, since it was in front of our restaurant and we had food on our minds. Rachael indulged me just long enough to take a snap and then we rushed in to grab the last free table.
It was convenient for us to swing by on our way out of town this morning, so we stopped for a closer look. As a reminder, here’s the monument and a closer view of the inscription:
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I was unable to find anything in English on the monument, so this information is all a Google translation that I may be misinterpreting here and there. The monument was constructed with a granite base, three granite steles above, and bronze bas-relief plates behind. The steles are replicas of the original ones which have been relocated to inside city hall, but I understand that the rest of the monument is original. Or maybe I have it backwards, and the bronze bas-reliefs are replacements for their originals. The figures are of a variety of Catalan peasantry subjects: hunters, shepherds, a small band of musicians, harvesters, a milkmaid.
The monument was created in 1937 by the sculptor Gustavo Violet to honor the syndicate of eight men who in 1861 facilitated the creation of a canal bringing water from the Tech to Céret and four of its neighboring villages. One reference states that they mortgaged their own properties to actualize the project, which was first proposed in 1751. The canal was finally completed in 1866.
And I apologize for not thinking this through better - if I looked around I imagine I could have found a section of the canal still standing.
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