Puntos de Interés
Hydrography
Font Picant (Picant Fountain)
In the southern part of the Gaverres mountains, in a small forest close to the neighbourhood of Bell-lloc in Santa Cristina d'Aro, the Font Picant was built many years ago. The locals say that, in those days, a farmer discovered this spring of water, where his animals came to drink when they were sick. When the animals soon got better, they decided to try it.
News of the benefits of those waters would soon reach Doctor Gravalosa, the town doctor, who decided to study the spring and concluded that the waters did indeed possess medicinal properties. This soon made inhabitants of nearby towns begin to come in search of a recovery from their ailments. The fame that these waters reached even attracted Ferdinand VII himself.
Thus, the fountain was built and the water that flowed from it began to be bottled and distributed. The water’s medicinal properties come from it being both ferruginous and high in bicarbonates. A bottling plant was constructed at the end of the 19th century, with the water being marketed under the name of Agua Mineral de Madremaña. Manantial de Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles (mineral water from Madremaña, source of Our Lady of the Angels).
Declared of public interest in 1904, it was present at the Paris (1900) and Barcelona (1905) expositions. Although up to 10,000 units a year were bottled, the bottling business was beset with financial difficulties the project to build a spa did not gain traction. With time, and the explosion of the Civil War, it was abandoned. In 2011, the site was declared an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC).