Ten years ago, I started traveling around the country to prepare this summer series promoted by the ARA (Argentine Association of Cultural Heritage) and the Catalan Cultural Heritage Agency. The only one. And God grant you the thousands of kilometers I've traveled... The initiative that started today is about dams, hydroelectric plants, aqueducts, water museums, water towers, thermal baths... I'm starting to prepare it! Packed! But there's also another element of the visit that captivated me, but... There's nothing like seeing it. It's a large room located in the dam, where the columns are the centerpiece.
We go with the Enel representative for the area and director of the plant, Xavier Jou. We descend a wide spiral staircase, which already indicates that aesthetics are a fundamental element of this plant, and we arrive at the large hall. It is triangular and has two rows of hyperbolic pillars in the middle that support the roof. Each pillar is well lit, which gives them even more prominence. The star—and almost only—material is concrete. In reality, the hall has no specific function other than to be a place of passage. It is an empty space that allows access to the bowels of the dam for inspection and maintenance. There are seven horizontal galleries and a low perimeter gallery.
This magnificent hypostyle hall would be the ideal space for a concert or a party, I think.
Outside, next to the staircase we came down, there is a sculpture dedicated to those who worked on the construction of the dam.To those who collaborated in the realization of the Susqueda jump", I read at the foot of the monument. It's unusual in this country to have a monument to the workers of a dam, or in any public works project. Here there's not one, but two (one dedicated to the workers—located at the dam—and another dedicated to those who died—located at the hydroelectric plant; those who lost their lives are, therefore, doubly honored). All of this bears the clear stamp of Arturo Rebollo, the designer of the plant, who continues to inspire admiration for his design today. Rebollo died this year, 2025, and his transfer has gone largely unnoticed. "Arturo Rebollo must have had a deft hand to get the artistic elements he proposed accepted, which, of course, involved more headaches and a larger budget," comments Xavier Jou. Rebollo was an eminence. He studied architecture, but it wasn't enough, and he also studied geological sciences, art history, anthropology, philosophy, aesthetics, and geological engineering... Seven university degrees!
When he was just 26 years old, he designed this dam. He took on a huge challenge. That's why he traveled to investigate firsthand the construction techniques and methods used to build dams. Shortly after receiving the commission, the Malpasset dam, in France, broke. It was the same type of dam as the Susqueda dam, causing 421 deaths. Rebollo didn't hesitate to go see that dam.
We take a car to the power plant, which is 3.5 kilometers below. We enter a tunnel with futuristic lighting. "It was buried to achieve the greatest possible gradient," explains Xavier. There are two original turbines and a third that was installed a few years later, in 1981.
I feel like I'm in a science fiction movie. I pause for a long moment in front of a frieze that explains, through iron figures in action, just like the Egyptians and other high cultures did, how this facility was built. I'm also struck by the various "permanent" plants and flowers—they don't need to be watered—made of iron. All of this bears, once again, the stamp of Arturo Rebollo.
"At Susqueda, there were staff working 24 hours a day, in shifts, at the dam and the power plant. Now everything is automated," Xavier explains to me as we stand in front of a huge control panel. It hasn't been used for years, but it has remained a vestige of the past. It's very graphic: a diagram with buttons. But I don't understand anything it "says."
"The Susqueda Dam is essential for the water supply in Barcelona and the metropolitan area, for domestic consumption, irrigation, and industry. If Susqueda were to disappear, we would have a problem," says Xavier. "In recent years, with the implementation of desalination plants, the reuse of treated water through water regeneration, and the pumping of water from the Llobregat River upstream for reuse, Susqueda has become somewhat less essential. But it still remains so."
Built in the 1960s
The Susqueda Dam was built between 1963 and 1967. A village was flooded, but it is less talked about than the Sau reservoir—located a few kilometers further upstream—because no bell towers can be seen.
The dam is a double-curved vault, that is, curved horizontally and vertically. It's made of concrete cubes, including joints—all of which are numbered!—"The joints are the dam's weak point; we have to monitor whether they widen or narrow," says Xavier. The joints between the concrete are where the dam's movements mostly occur.