Puntos de Interés
Hydrography
Ojos de San Jorge
To the southwest and west of the city of Albacete there was a group of old springs, springs, lagoons and wetlands. Los Ojos de San Jorge is a spring that formed part of this group that lasted until the second half of the 20th century. The lagoons of El Salobral, Fuente del Charco, la Estacadilla, Hoya Vacas, Albaidel, Acequión, among others, are examples of these wetlands that existed in the area.
When thousands of hectares were irrigated with groundwater in the 1970s, these wetlands dried up, as the aquifers that fed them were depleted by use.
The Ojos de San Jorge canal was built in 1483. Its purpose was to increase the flow of water from another existing canal in the area and thus achieve sufficient power to move the mills.
The Infante Don Juan Manuel, Prince of Castile, was the driving force behind this work in the 16th century, which had decisive consequences for the future of Albacete. The works that allowed the channelling and canalisation of the waters made it possible to reclaim many lands that were then waterlogged, as well as to irrigate others. But not everything was positive, since, at the beginning of the Modern Age, this network was already in a deep state of deterioration due, above all, to the great agricultural crisis, producing floods and various catastrophes in the area that also made it unhealthy to live in Albacete, and even led to proposals to abandon the town. These problems were solved by the construction of the María Cristina canal.
It should be noted that water from the Ojos de San Jorge supplied the city of Albacete until the early eighties, since on 15 April 1905 the monarch Alfonso XIII pressed an electric button and made the water gush forth from the Altozano fountain. This marked the end of an initiative that began in 1835, whose precedent, in turn, was a project begun in 1793 during the reign of Carlos III de Borbón.
The drying up of the thousand-year-old spring and the great growth of Albacete made it necessary to look for water in very deep wells, until the alarming decline of the aquifers and chemical contamination from farming made it advisable to use the waters of the Júcar river as the main source of supply for the city.
Finally, one interesting detail about the spring is that it was located on land belonging to Don Saturnino López, an eminent figure of the city who donated it for the benefit of Albacete.