Calle de Lucio del Valle

Behind this name is a Madrid man who changed how the city drank. Lucio del Valle y Arana (1815-1874), civil engineer and architect, directed the works that brought the water of the Lozoya river to Madrid through the Canal de Isabel II. The opening, in June 1858, had something of a spectacle about it: before Queen Isabella II and a crowd, a fountain raised a column of water nearly thirty meters high to prove that the mountains now fed the capital’s pipes. That jet ended centuries of water carriers and wells. Del Valle did not stop at water. He remodeled the Puerta del Sol, more than doubling it and giving it the semicircular shape it still keeps, and designed metal lighthouses in the Ebro delta. He died in 1874 while directing the School of Civil Engineering. A plaque at number 33 of Calle de Valverde, where he lived, remembers the engineer who brought water to Madrid.