Alcala del Rio Dam

Alcalá del Río Dam & Reservoir

Alcalá del Río Dam was built in 1930 on the bed of the Guadalquivir River, in the Andalusian municipality of Alcala del Rio, province of Sevilla.

Gravity dam type with a height from foundations of 23,350 m. and a crest lenght of 205 m.

The Alcala del Rio Reservoir belong to the Guadalquivir River Basin and has a capacity of 20,6 hm3, its waters are regulated by gates.

Uses of the Reservoir

Hydroelectric

Irrigation

Distances from the Reservoir

Sevilla 17 km
Brenes 17 km
La Algaba 8,5 km
La Rinconada 4 km
San José de la Rinconada 6,5 km

Alcalá del Río Dam and Hydroelectric Power Plant

In Alcalá del Río is one of the most important dams built from the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, probably built on the site of a Roman dam, superimposing classical and industrial historical heritage in a whole.

Building built by the Civil Engineer Don Carlos Mendoza y Gimeno combining the features of functional constructions with a certain historicist monumentality that gives the building the appearance of a fortress. The author of the dam would be president of Mengemor a year later, a company that would later merge with Sevillana de Electricidad.

It was an avant-garde work as it was the first gate dam to be built in Spain and the straight alignment system was also innovative. It was intended to provide a system of locks that would allow navigation to Córdoba, a system that never worked. Today, with these locks partially destroyed, the water intake for supplying Seville in times of drought has been started in their place.

In addition to the retaining wall, the dam has a bridge for road traffic, and on top of it, another service bridge for maneuvering the dam and the power plant. The set and the power plant were put into service in 1931. Inside the plant there are two Kaplan-type turbines, ideal for a large flow and a small jump, as is the case with this set and the lower course of the Guadalquivir.