Lomography

Puente Internacional from Portugal to Spain.
written by jaalvarez on December 15th, 2008 , 4 comments (1 vote)

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In the North frontier of Portugal (in Spain) is Galicia. From the birth of Portugal as a country, the relationships between Galicia and Portugal were frequent. There are a lot of bridges from Portugal to Spain and to Spain to Portugal.

This is the most beautiful to me. This bridge joint two towns: Tui (Spain) and Valença do Minho (Portugal), by the N-551 road. If you search in the web, the town of Tui is best known as a frontier town. The history of the town has always been associated with Valença do Minho, on the other bank of the Miño river, in Portugal (Miño in Spanish and Minho in Portuguese).

The old “Puente Internacional”, built by a Gustave Eiffel´s disciple in 1884, conforms the typical landscape of the Tui-Valença surroundings.
At present, there is another bridge between Spain and Portugal, the road from Vigo to Tui that joins the road from Valença to Lisboa. I think we should spend at least one hundred years for the new bridge will be considered a tourist attraction !!!
The bridge that spans the Miño, connects the historic villages of Tui and Valença do Minho, both by road and railway.

The bridge is made up of a long lattice structure of metal, supported by heavy stone piers –at first meant to be made of metal-. The metal pieces were previously constructed and then put on the ground with no other supports. Today the bridge is in a good condition. It goes in North – South (South – North) direction. Depending on the time of day, you can walk in the sun or shade of the bridge (two in one!). I recommend that you walk along the bridge, by either side (best if you do it first on the one hand and second on the other.

It would be wonderful at that moment, a train passed by the upper !!! I remember this bridge when I walk along a bridge in Praha, across the Moldava, and a train crosses it, a few meters from me. Your senses can carry you to the past, when trains reigned …