ALBOLAFIA FERRIS FERRIS IN CÖRDOBA

The mayor of Córdoba, José María Bellido, announced today that the City Council is going to carry out an emergency action in the ferris wheel and the mill of Albolafia, which have been in a state of abandonment and dirt for months. The intervention, which will be undertaken by the Urban Planning Management with a budget of 48,000 euros and an execution period of two months, will include cleaning the environment and studying the pathologies of the Albolafia mill, but the restoration is postponed to a second phase. of the complex cataloged as Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC).

The wheel of Félix Ortega

The architect of the Management and coordinator of Management of the Historic Center, Rosa Lara, explained today that the Albolafia ferris wheel, which has been part of the coat of arms of Córdoba since the 14th century, was built the architect and researcher Félix Hernández in the 60s studying the river mills and other waterwheels that existed in the province of Córdoba. “Then he imagined with the data he had what that Ferris wheel could have been like,” explains Lara. However, in the latest analyzes that have been carried out, it has been determined that it would not be well dimensioned, so currently “it is difficult for it to have hydraulic activity due to the dimensions “The ferris wheel measures 16 meters in diameter and is made of teak wood, weighing up to 6,600 kilos.

The school-workshop experience

However, in Neither of these two operations is intended to make the wheel spin again. The last time that the people of Córdoba were able to see the Albolafia in motion was back in 1994 whena school-workshop worked to recover it. The director of that school-workshop was Angel Galan and the rehabilitation project was commissioned to the architect Juan Jiménez Povedano. Although initially the ferris wheel that the architect had built was going to be restored Félix Hernández in 1965, The idea was discarded and it was decided to “assemble the entire Ferris wheel again.”

In a report published by Diario CÓRDOBA in 2020, Ángel Galán recalls that finding the wood was difficult, and they had to order it directly so that they could cut the 14-meter planks at source and put them in a drying room. As for the buckets, he says: “We recovered some that were in the mud, which we made because we had ceramics, but they turned out to be very large, because the ferris wheel that exists now is a little smaller than the one in Hernández.” This made it necessary to also order custom buckets, which were made in The Rambla. With all the material “the ferris wheel was assembled and put into operation.”

The workshop school commissioned a video about the Albolafia Ferris wheel in operation Albolafia with the idea of ​​making known the results of the intervention and that there would be evidence in the times to come of what had been achieved.

Needs to turn

According to the GMU architect, in principle, for the Ferris wheel to spin again it would have to be reinforced, because if it is only restored as it is “it will work for a very short time, because It is flimsy so that it works with the naturalness of the river flow, which is something we cannot control,” explains Rosa Lara.

In this way, the only formula for the wheel to work naturally would be to have this reinforcement and have sustainable maintenance of the riverbed, that would allow water to always reach the wheel, something that would be economically costly and environmentally questionable. Another thing would be that was added a engine that made it rotate mechanically and that a kind of swimming pool be built that would always allow for the necessary amount of water in the Albolafia area. “That perhaps, but the maintenance that the wheel has had in history using the force of the river, a priori we do not see that as viable. We would have to make such a reinforcement that perhaps we would vary the structural conception of the wheel a lot,” he concluded by saying. the person in charge of Urban Planning.