Sant Sadurní Bridge

In the Wikipedia list of places of interest about Sant Sadurní d'Anoia there is a laconic, but quite eloquent reference to the “Pont de Sant Sadurní”. Although the sources consulted do not provide precise technical or chronological data, the mention allows us to intuit the existence of a historical walkway that saves the Anoia — or one of its tributary streams — and that, over the centuries, has articulated the natural accesses to the urban center.

Bridges have always been key pieces of the Penedès landscape: the roads that linked Barcelona and Tarragona crossed a succession of torrents and streams that forced the construction of solid structures. In the area, the most common type is that of a semicircular arch of stone quarries, often reinforced with buttresses or cutters that reduce the thrust of the water in times of flood. There are no concrete indications of the construction system of the Sant Sadurní Bridge, but experience compared with other nearby bridges — such as the Batlle Vell or the Pont Vell de Subirats — suggests a traditional masonry device, possibly retouched or widened during the 19th century as a result of improvements to the royal road.

The heritage interest of this bridge lies more in its social function than in its formal spectacularity: it acts as an everyday hinge between the urban fabric and the vineyards that surround the town. During the harvest, the bridge has seen countless carts full of grapes pass by and, in recent times, tractors and bicycles of the wine tourism route. Although today there are new viaducts of modern construction, the old bridge retains the symbolic character of a gateway, a point where many visitors catch, for the first time, the breath of yeast and must that floats above the river.

Despite the lack of an exhaustive cataloguing, neighbors and preservation entities have shown interest in better documenting it: an own file is proposed in the Cultural Heritage Map and interpretive signage is wanted to be incorporated. Meanwhile, the recommendation is to follow it on foot, contemplate the rows of vines that extend beyond and, if the light is benevolent, stop in the middle of the arch to hear the discreet murmur of Anoia, a living memory of the communion between river landscape and wine culture that defines Sant Sadurní d'Anoia.