Bellvespre Canal

The municipality of Amer belongs to the Ter River basin, which borders the municipality to the south. The Brugent River flows through the town centre and into the Ter River. It receives water from several streams, including the Can Catau, Castle and Pinyana streams.

The town of Amer benefits from a network of canals that run through open ditches and, in some sections, through concrete caissons or pipes forming aqueducts.One of the main waterways here is the Bellvespre canal, located on the west bank of the Brugent, which takes water from a lock situated behind the Hostal Sant Marçal guesthouse. The canal runs parallel to the river until about 130 metres before the Rieral bridge, at which point it turns toward the town centre, where it divides into secondary canals.

These works date back to the times of the Benedictine monks at Santa Maria d’Amer monastery. The water was used to run the flour mill—famed throughout the surrounding villages as it produced very fine flour—as well as irrigation systems and the Bellvespre Mill power station.

Le nom Bellvespre provient de la famille qui en a pris soin après les moines. Populairement, elle était connue sous le nom de centrale du moulin, car c’était la première centrale chargée de produire l’électricité pour la ville et de gérer l’éclairage public jusqu’à ce que le réseau électrique soit vendu à la société hydroélectrique de Catalunya entre 1965 et 1970.

A community of local users still depends upon the water from the Bellvespre canal to irrigate their vegetable plots.