Sep 18, 2026 · 5 min · 6 segments
The story of the mountain that swallowed water - a failed reservoir project from the first half of the 20th century. *You can listen also listen to all the Postcard from Spain podcasts on Spotify…
Vernon PearceHost
The Isbert Dam, also known as Isbert's Folly, the reasons for which will become apparent during this podcast, is an unusual piece of hydraulic engineering in the Val de l'Igoire in Alicante's Marina Alta.
It sits on the river Girona, where the river squeezes through the spectacular Estret d'Isbert at the lower end of the Barrac de l'Inferno.
The gorge here is extraordinarily narrow, with limestone walls rising more than 100 metres.
The Valencian naturalist Antonio José Cabanillas recognised that the narrow gorge would make an ideal place for a dam.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the project was revived as a way of providing irrigation water to the agricultural plains around La Rectoria and Denia, particularly after the phylloxera crisis damaged the traditional raisin industry, as I talked about in the previous podcast entitled Valencians to New York.
The original irrigators' community envisaged supplying roughly 10,000 hectares.
In order to get building materials to the site, it was necessary to build a 50-metre tunnel through the mountain.
A later project enlarged the structure, and the dam was completed around 1944-45.
The Isbert Dam, also known as Isbert's Folly, the reasons for which will become apparent during this podcast, is an unusual piece of hydraulic engineering in the Val de l'Igoire in Alicante's Marina Alta.
It sits on the river Girona, where the river squeezes through the spectacular Estret d'Isbert at the lower end of the Barrac de l'Inferno.
The gorge here is extraordinarily narrow, with limestone walls rising more than 100 metres.
The Valencian naturalist Antonio José Cabanillas recognised that the narrow gorge would make an ideal place for a dam.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the project was revived as a way of providing irrigation water to the agricultural plains around La Rectoria and Denia, particularly after the phylloxera crisis damaged the traditional raisin industry, as I talked about in the previous podcast entitled Valencians to New York.
The original irrigators' community envisaged supplying roughly 10,000 hectares.
In order to get building materials to the site, it was necessary to build a 50-metre tunnel through the mountain.
A later project enlarged the structure, and the dam was completed around 1944-45.
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